pickles
(from The American Frugal Housewife, by Lydia Maria Child, 1832)
Ingredients:
Instructions:
(from The American Frugal Housewife, by Lydia Maria Child, 1832)
Ingredients:
cucumbers
salt water brine
vinegar
pepper
allspice
mustard-seed
flag-root
horseradish
alum
Instructions:
Cucumbers should be in weak brine three or four days after they are picked; then they should be put in a tin or wooden pail of clean water, and kept slightly warm in the kitchen corner for two or three days. Then take as much vinegar as you think your pickle jar will hold; scald it with pepper, allspice, mustard-seed, flag-root, horseradish, &c., if you happen to have them; half of them will spice the pickles very well. Throw in a bit of alum as big as a walnut; this serves to make pickles hard. Skim the vinegar clean, and pour it scalding hot upon the cucumbers. Brass vessels are not healthy for preparing anything acid. Red cabbages need no other pickling than scalding, spiced vinegar poured upon them, and suffered to remain eight or ten days before you eat them. Some people think it improves them to keep them in salt and water twenty-four hours before they are pickled.
If you find your pickles soft and insipid, it is owing to the weakness of the vinegar. Throw away the vinegar, or keep it to clean your brass kettles, then cover your pickles with strong scalding vinegar into which a little allspice, ginger, horseradish, and alum have been thrown. By no means omit a pretty large bit of alum. Pickles attended to in this way will keep for years and be better and better every year.
gherkins (no. 117.)
(from The Cook's Oracle: And Housekeeper's Manual, by William Kitchiner, 1822)
Ingredients:
Instructions:
(from The Cook's Oracle: And Housekeeper's Manual, by William Kitchiner, 1822)
Ingredients:
gherkins, about four inches long, and an inch in diameter
a brine made from...
1/4 lb. salt, to 1 quart of water
vinegar
seasonings for pickling from preceding receipt for Walnuts (No. 116.), to each quart...
2 oz. black pepper
1 oz. ginger
1 oz. salt
1/2 oz. allspice
1/2 drachm Cayenne
no eschalots needed
Instructions:
Get those of about four inches long, and an inch in diameter, the crude half-grown little gherkins usually pickled are good for nothing. Put them into (unglazed) stone pans; cover them with a brine of salt and water, made with a quarter of a pound of salt to a quart of water; cover them down; set them on the earth before the fire for two or three days till they begin to turn yellow; then put away the water, and cover them with hot vinegar; set them again before the fire; keep them hot till they become green (this will take eight or ten days); then pour off the vinegar, having ready to cover them a pickle of fresh vinegar, &c., the same as directed in the preceding receipt for walnuts (leaving out the eschalots); cover them with a bung, bladder, and leather. Read the observations on pickles, p. 487.
Obs. The vinegar the gherkins were greened in, will make excellent salad sauce, or for cold meats. It is, in fact, superlative cucumber vinegar.
Last edited by a moderator:
Forum Host
Bringing the