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Grind the tomatoes in a sausage grinder, cover them with vinegar and let stand over night, then strain twice through a cloth, chop onions, (to your taste,) celery, pepper crushed, (not ground,) cloves crushed, cinnamon crushed, cauliflower cut fine, and mustard seed. Boil good cider vinegar and throw over it after mixing it thoroughly. Keep it well covered with the vinegar.

(You can find the original recipe in the facsimile copy reproduced in Tom Kelchner’s new book The Story of the 1881 Cumberland Valley Cook and General Recipe Book)

I thought this was a unique name and would be easy to find online. That wasn’t really true, but one of the few entries I found was from Genealogy.com from the Higdon family, as follows:

I found this entry from an American Dialect website for higdon from a Pennsylvania Civil War era newspaper in 1863—clearly it’s an old classic:
16 September 1863, THE AGITATOR, pg. 3:HIGDON.
To 4 qts. cucumbers chopped fine, add 2 qts. onions also chopped, sprinkle with salt, drain over night in a colander under pressure, then add 1 tablespoonful black pepper, do. cayenne, half an ounce cloves, do. cinnamon, nutmeg, 2 handful mustard seed; put all together in a jar, and cover with strong vinegar.–Half green tomatoes may be used in place of all cucumbers.

This gives me the important clue to try green tomatoes, which is honestly not what I was expecting. I thought I was making ketchup. It’s the time of year to clean up the vegetable garden, so I happen to have green tomatoes at the ready.

In place of a sausage grinder, I have a handy mini-chopper that will have to do the job. I get a mason jar full, about 5 cups of the green stuff. I poured white vinegar on it overnight and let it sit in the fridge.

I squeezed out the water/vinegar mixture twice. This reduced the amount of tomato I was working with by quite a lot. I started chopping more vegetables: one onion, one onion’s worth of cauliflower, skipped the celery since I was out of it, used about half tablespoon of pepper, skipped the cloves and cinnamon, and used one handful of mustard seed.

I boiled two cups of cider vinegar to pour over everything – or threw everything in my boiling pot to mix together. Then I put it in jars to sit in the fridge for a few days before trying it.

It was probably not a great idea to use purple onion, but that is what I usually have in stock.  It did turn the cauliflower a lovely pink color if you like that sort of thing.

Reviews: 

I give this 4/5 stars. This was a nice, vinegar flavored relish. It was not as strongly acidic as some of the other recipes had been, and as you can see it made a great hot dog topping.  It doesn’t taste very tomato-ey so I think it would be hard to guess what the secret ingredient is.  I would make this again as it is a nice way to use up those last lingering tomatoes that are never going to ripen.

– Rachael Zuch of Zuch Design