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Pickled Peppers
Take large green ones (the best variety is the sweet pepper), make a small incision at the side, take out all the seeds, being careful not to mangle the peppers; soak in brine that will float an egg for two days, changing water twice; stuff with chopped cabbage, or tomatoes seasoned with spice as for mangoes (omitting the cayenne pepper), or a mixture of nasturtiums, chopped onions, red cabbage, grapes, and cucumbers, seasoned with mustard-seed and a little mace. Sew up incision, place in jar, and cover with cold-spiced vinegar.
A cold-pack stuffed pickle of the kind Ohio households put down by the crockful in late summer. The instructions assume you have already read the book's directions for "mangoes," and they assume a salt brine measured by eye.
- Brine that will float an eggThat is roughly a 10 percent salt solution. Mix, then test with a fresh raw egg rather than trusting a measurement; a stale egg floats in plain water and will mislead you. Use pickling or kosher salt, since the iodine and anti-caking agents in table salt cloud the brine and can darken the peppers.
- "Changing water twice"Most likely renewing the brine rather than rinsing in fresh water: drain and cover with newly made brine of the same strength, twice over the two days. The point is to draw out water and firm the flesh while discouraging surface spoilage.
- Seasoned as for mangoes"Mangoes" in this book are stuffed pickled melons or peppers, and the spicing referred to typically runs to mustard seed, whole cloves, cinnamon, mace, and often grated horseradish. The recipe simply directs you to leave out the cayenne here.
- Sweet peppers then and nowThe thick-walled blocky bell of the supermarket is a good substitute, though the sweet peppers of the period were probably thinner-walled. Large sweet Italian or Cubanelle peppers stuff and stitch more like the original.
- NasturtiumsAlmost certainly the green seed pods rather than the flowers. Pickled nasturtium pods were a common stand-in for capers and give a sharp, mustardy bite; pick them while still firm and bright green.
- Sewing the incisionPlain cotton kitchen twine and a large needle. Wooden toothpicks laced with twine work as well and are easier to remove at the table.
- Spiced vinegarUse vinegar of at least 5 percent acidity and do not water it down. The peppers must stay fully submerged; a small plate or a water-filled bag as a weight keeps the tops from lifting.
- StorageThis is a cold-pack pickle with no heat processing and no sealed jar, so treat it as a fresh refrigerator pickle rather than a shelf-stable preserve. Keep it cold, give it two to three weeks to take the vinegar, and eat it within a couple of months.
- YieldThe original gives none. Figure four to six stuffed bell peppers, or eight to ten smaller sweet ones, to a wide-mouth quart jar, with about two cups of spiced vinegar to cover.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877) came out of Ohio Methodist church circles and reflects a household year organized around the garden's gluts — hence a pickle chapter long enough to absorb every surplus vegetable in September. The stuffed pepper here belongs to the American family of "mangoes," a word that in nineteenth-century cookbooks had drifted from the tropical fruit to mean any hollowed vegetable — muskmelon, cucumber, or pepper — packed with chopped seasoned filling and pickled whole. The usage is generally traced to English pickled mango imports of the eighteenth century, which colonial cooks imitated with what grew locally, keeping the name for the method rather than the fruit. The nasturtium seeds in the third filling point the same way: American kitchens far from a caper supply substituted whatever pungent green pod they could grow themselves, and the practice was old enough by 1877 that the book feels no need to explain it.