Orange ketchup

Orange ketchup from a cookbook by J. L. lane. Mrs. Lane wrote 365 Orange Recipes: An Orange Recipe for Every Day in the Year in 1909. Some of the offerings, understandably enough, are a bit of a reach but others deserve revival. This is one of them. Very much a creature of its time, it has nothing of the its astringent eighteenth century antecedents. Instead it is recognizably a later creation, thick sour and sweet ketchup on the order of Heinz. The Lane recipe, however, is so much more compelling in its reliance on green instead of ripe tomatoes and brown instead of white sugar. It is not, however, one of Mrs. Lane’s more rigorous recipes so we have taken a few liberties in adapting it.

• about 1 teaspoon cayenne
• about 1 oz minced ginger
• 3 mandarin, blood or Seville oranges, seeded and chopped
• 1 lb chopped green tomatoes
• ¾ lb brown sugar
• about 2 teaspoons salt

1. Simply dump everything into a heavy pot pot and boil it, adding dribbles of water to prevent scorching as required, until thick and uniform. It will take some time, at least as long as a couple of hours.

Notes:

-Mrs. Lane’s recipe makes about five times as much ‘catsup’ but, unnervingly, instructs her reader to pour the ketchup “into small glasses.” You would require quite a lot of them.