TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 102, 2 May 1931, Page 4 (Supplement)

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

J.K.M., Newmarket.—l am afraid that your sauce has too much water in it. To be rightly made tomato sauce should be quite thick, so thick that it leaves the bottle with difficulty. I think that your fruit was used wet or water put in with it. You might try boiling it up again to get rid of the water. This would kill the fermentation. Here are two reliable recipes which you can put in your book and consult:—; , Tomato Sauce. Ingredients.—Twelve large tomatoes, 2 Spanish onions, loz of salt, half teaspoonful of cayenne pepper, 1 pint of vinegar. Method: Peel the onions, slice them thinly, place them in a stew jar with the tomatoes and cook in a slow oven until tender. Pass the pulp through a strainer, put in the stewpan with the vinegar, salt and cayenne, and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Store for use in airtight bottles. To accomplish this buy a stick of cheap sealing wax, melt in old vessel, and dip in corked heads of bottles. I think you will find this will keep. Mushroom Ketchup. Ingredients.—Seven pounds of mushrooms, half a pound of salt. To one quart of musliroom liquor add Aoz of allspice, £oz of ground ginger, \ teaspoonful of pounded mace, A teaspoonful of cayenne pepper. Method: Mushrooms intended for this purpose should be gathered on a dry day, otherwise the ketchup will not keep. Trim the tips of the stalks but do not peel, simply rub any part clean with a little salt. Place them in a large jar, sprinkling each layer liberally with salt. Let them remain three days, stirring them three times a day. At the end of that time cbok them very gently either on the stove or in a cool oven until the juice flows freely, then strain the mushrooms through a clean cloth but do not squeeze them. Replace the liquor in the jar, add allspice, ginger, cayenne and mace, as stated above, place the jar in a saucepan of boiling water and cook gently for three hours. Strain two or three times through fine muslin, pour into small bottle, seal and store.