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Preservation Yellow Pickle

yellow pickle
(from Housekeeping in the Blue Grass, by the Paris Ladies of the Presbyterian Church, 1875)

Ingredients:
18 cucumbers sliced lengthwise​
18 onions​
4 heads of cabbage sliced​
salt​
ground cinnamon​
cloves​
ginger​
pepper​
white & black mustard​
mace to taste​
turmeric​
two gallons of vinegar​
two cups of sugar​
Instructions:
One and one half dozen cucumbers sliced lengthwise, and one and one half dozen onions, four heads of cabbage sliced; put in a basket a layer of each, then a layer of salt; hang up to drip twenty-four hours; ground cinnamon, cloves, ginger, pepper, white and black mustard, mace to taste; turmeric enough to color; two gallons of vinegar, two cups of sugar; boil sugar and vinegar together, pour over four mornings.​
--Mrs. Morris Gass​

1876 cookbook.jpg


Several years ago, I purchased a recipe book published in 1876 entitled "Housekeeping In The Bluegrass." The book fills the pages with old recipes and several handwritten ones that demand full attention.
 
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I love reading old recipe books! I have a very old, “Old Settlement Cookbook” from my Grandmothers house. It has recipes for invalids etc..I need to fix the binding as it has come away, and several pages need to be tipped back in..I will get to it eventually!
 
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It is great book. I saw at the library when we lived in Ky. I do wish I had copy now.
I saw it in a local book store, paid very little for it. I love old recipe books. I have many recipes from my great grandmother who lived to be 92. She had thirteen children and was used to preparing huge meals and cooking for a crowd.
 
Amazon has reproduction copies available. Here's a video on the (or a) salt-rising bread recipe from it:


I have wondered what salt-rising bread tastes like ever since reading Grace Livingston Hill's Marcia Schuyler, where Marcia, a young bride, is challenged on the subject by the two Aunts who raised her husband:

"Can you make good bread?"

The question was flung out by Aunt Hortense like a challenge, and the very set of her nostrils gave Marcia warning. But it was in a relieved voice that ended almost in a ripple of laugh that she answered quite assuredly: "Oh, yes, indeed. I can make beautiful bread. I just love to make it, too!"

"But how do you make it?" quickly questioned Aunt Amelia, like a repeating rifle. If the first shot had not struck home, the second was likely to. "Do you use hop yeast? Potatoes? I thought so. Don't know how to make salt-rising, do you? It's just what might have been expected."

"David has always been used to salt-rising bread," said Aunt Hortense with a grim set of her lips as though she were delivering a judgment. "He was raised on it."

"If David does not like my bread," said Marcia with a rising color and a nervous little laugh, "then I shall try to make some that he does like."

There was an assurance about the "if" that did not please the oracle.

"David was raised on salt-rising bread," said Aunt Hortense again as if that settled it. "We can send you down a loaf or two every time we bake until you learn how."

"I'm sure it's very kind of you," said Marcia, not at all pleased, "but I do not think that will be necessary. David has always seemed to like our bread when he visited at home. Indeed he often praised it."

"David would not be impolite," said Aunt Amelia, after a suitable pause in which Marcia felt disapprobation in the air. "It would be best for us to send it. David's health might suffer if he was not suitably nourished."
Marcia's cheeks grew redder. Bread had been one of her stepmother's strong points, well infused into her young pupil. Madam Schuyler had never been able to say enough to sufficiently express her scorn of people who made salt-rising bread.

"My stepmother made beautiful bread," she said quite childishly; "she did not think salt-rising was so healthy as that made from hop yeast. She disliked the odor in the house from salt-rising bread."

Now indeed the aunts exchanged glances of "On to the combat." Four red spots flamed giddily out in their four sallow cheeks, and eight shining knitting needles suddenly became idle. The moment was too momentous to work. It was as they feared, even the worst. For, be it known, salt-rising bread was one of their most tender points, and for it they would fight to the bitter end. They looked at her with four cold, forbidding, steely, spectacled eyes, and Marcia felt that their looks said volumes: "And she so young too! To be so out of the way!" was what they might have expressed to one another. Marcia felt she had been unwise in uttering her honest, indignant sentiments concerning salt-rising bread.

In Marcia's defense, she's young yet, I believe only sixteen.

I never have understood why salt-rising bread is called salt-rising bread, and none of the recipes I've seen have enlightened me.

None of which has a thing to do with yellow pickles. Which I have never had, either, but sound interesting. I wonder if I could find some in one of the Amish shops east of us.
 
ewww. What keeps them from spoiling? Pickles I learned of were layered in a crock and covered with water with a weighted float to let gasses out as they fermented.
 
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