Button Tomatos
These are the very smallest tomatos, and are excellent for pickling and preserving. If quite ripe, and free from blemishes, they will keep very well in cold vinegar, and are the easiest done of all pickles. There are two sorts of button tomatos, the red and the yellow, both equally good. Wipe every tomato clean and dry, and put them into small glass jars that have a cover. Fill the jars two-thirds with the tomatos, and then fill up to the top with the best cider vinegar. On the top put a table-spoonful of salad oil, and cover them closely. They require nothing to secure their keeping well. But the taste will be improved, by putting in with them, three very small thin muslin bags, each containing mace, nutmeg, and ginger, broken small, but not powdered. Lay one bag of spice at the bottom of the jar; one about the middle, and one near the top. If done without spice, they are the cheapest of all pickles. Do not put them into soups or stews; but eat them cold with meat, like other pickles.
If kegs of these tomatos were carried to sea, and liberally served out to the crew, the scurvy would be less frequent, even on long voyages.
Large whole tomatos would do for this purpose. We wish it were the universal custom in ships to take out with them plenty of tomatos kept in this way in vinegar. Tomato catchup is now much used for the army—so it should be for the navy; not only for the sick, but for the well; to keep them well.