Embellish The Relish! An Unbelievable History

While we can’t be certain who made the first batch of Gourmet Tomato Relish, it is known from ancient hieroglyphics found in King Tut’s tomb in Egypt that at least seven urns of the Relish were entombed with him. Presumably the Relish was considered “the nectar of the Gods” and no prudent Pharaoh would dare leave home without it! Later, when Moses led the Children of Israel out of Egypt to the Promised Land, Moses insisted that the recipe and all existing Gourmet Tomato Relish in stock be carried with them. Moses was confident that without the Relish, Pharaoh’s men would never be able to catch them. They took it all! The parting of the Red Sea has been attributed to the power and goodness of the Relish.

Christopher Columbus approached Queen Isabella of Spain in the late fourteen hundreds to seek funding for a voyage to the East by sailing to the West. Knowing the healing power of the Relish, Isabella agreed to finance Columbus’s voyage only if he agreed to carry along fourteen kegs of Gourmet Tomato Relish. This Relish would ward off diseases such as Scurvy which was important on a voyage of that distance and duration.

Shortly after landing in the New World, the settlers befriended the American Indian by sharing the Gourmet Tomato Relish with them. The Indians fell in love with its taste and consistency but because the settlers would not share the Recipe with them, the two fought many battles. A whole colony was lost as a result of the battles fought over the Relish. John Rolph and the Indian girl, Pocahontis, of Virginia, eloped with the Recipe.

Several generations of Virginians guarded the recipe through the years. The Relish inspired Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson had a particular interest in gardening and grew enough tomatoes, peppers and onions to produce Gourmet Tomato Relish at Montecello for all of the students at the University of Virginia.

When South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter in April of 1861 it signaled the beginning of four years of bloody war between the Union forces of the north and the Confederates of the south. Abraham Lincoln himself knew the importance of the Relish and instructed General Sherman to capture the Recipe on his way back from Georgia. In 1863 Confederate President Jefferson Davis, ordered Virginian, Captain William Anderson (Devil Anse) Hatfield, to keep the Recipe from falling into Union hands. The plan was to hide the Recipe somewhere near the Tug Fork River which separated West Virginia from Kentucky. Devil Anse settled with his 13 children (nine of whom were boys) on the West Virginia side of the Tug. It was not long before Randolph (Ole Ran’l) McCoy, who had sixteen children of his own (also with nine boys) and lived on the Kentucky side of the Tug became aware of the fact that Devil Anse had the Recipe.

For nearly thirty years a feud ensued between the Hatfields and the McCoys over control of the Recipe. There were 13 deaths between the two families. When the feud ended, in late 1891, both the Hatfields and the McCoys (those who were still alive) agreed that the Relish was too precious a commodity to be controlled by any one family. There was some talk of destroying the Recipe so that no one would be able to reap its benefits. My fourth great grandfather had sampled the Relish and knew that it would someday become a staple in every home. In the dark of night on September 24, 1891, he stole the Recipe before it could be destroyed and he buried it under river stones in a public park in St. Albans, West Virginia. He left a map showing where the Recipe was buried which my mother, Dorothy D. Prince, found in a trunk in the attic of my parents’ home in St. Albans in about 1950. The map led my father, Laurence L. Prince and my mother directly to the Recipe.

Mom made Gourmet Tomato Relish for us about once a year right in her own kitchen. The process took a lot of effort and was very time consuming. In Mom’s later years it was left up to me to make the Relish. I would guess that for over twenty years I have wanted to make it commercially. Since the Recipe came from St. Albans, WV, we named our little company Foothills Fancy Foods, LLC.

The recipe for Gourmet Tomato Relish is unique, and not subject to change in order to suit a particular bottler’s needs. We experimented with different suppliers and some commercially new products like “Reduced Moisture IQF Vegetables.” In the end the solution for production of the Relish was in using conventional ingredients and finding that special co-packer who would go to the trouble to make it in accordance with our specifications. After about a year of searching, we found what we needed in Bobbee’s Bottling of Louisburg, NC. Bobbee’s is truly a custom co-packer. We are grateful to Jack Pyritz of Bobbee’s for his willingness to work with us and his special care to ensure that the quality of our Relish is never compromised.

The Recipe is currently stored at Fort Knox as the Relish itself is as good as gold!

We invite you to "Embellish the Relish" yourself. Just click to visit Foothills Fancy Foods' Facebook page and Embellish the Relish!