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Ripe Cucumber Pickles
Take twenty-four large cucumbers, ripe and sound, six white onions, four large red peppers; pare and remove the seeds from the cucumbers, chop well, not too fine; then chop fine onions and peppers, mix thoroughly with one cup salt, one ounce white mustard ; place in a muslin bag; drain twenty-four hours, remove to glass jars, cover with cold vinegar and seal. They will keep a long time and are excellent. - Mrs. A. F. Conkey, Minneapolis, Minn. 1
Do not feed poultry for twenty-four hours before killing; catch. them without frightening or bruising, tie the feet together, hang up on a horizontal pole, tie the wings together over the back with a strip of soft cotton cloth; let them hang five minutes, then cut the throat or cut off the head with a very sharp knife, and allow them to hang until the blood has ceased to drip. The thorough bleeding. renders the meat more white and wholesome. Scald well by dipping in and out of a pail or tub of boiling water, being careful. not to scald so much as to set the feathers and make them more difficult to pluck; place the fowl on a board with head towards you, pull the feathers away from you, which will be in the direction. they naturally lie (if pulled in a contrary direction the skin is likely to be torn), be careful to remove all the pin-feathers with a knife or pair of tweezers; singe, but not smoke, over blazing paper, place on a meat-board, and with a sharp knife cut off the legs a little below the knee, to prevent the muscles from shrinking away from the joint, and remove the oil-bag above the tail; take out the crop, either by making a slit at the back of the neck or in front (the last is better), taking care that every thing pertaining to the crop or windpipe is removed, cut the neck-bone off close to the body, leaving the skin a good length if to be stuffed; cut around the vent, cut a slit three inches long from the tail upwards, being careful to cut only through the skin, put in the finger at the breast and detach all the intestines, taking care not to burst the gall-bag (situated near the upper part of the breast-bone, and attached to the liver; if broken, no washing can remove the bitter taint left on every spot it touches); put in the hand at the incision near the tail (271) To and draw out carefully all intestines; trim off the fat from the breast and at the lower incision; split the gizzard and take out the inside and inner lining (throw liver, heart, and gizzard into water, wash well, and lay aside to be cooked and used for the gravy); wash the fowl thoroughly in cold water twice, (some wipe carefully with a wet cloth, and afterwards with a dry cloth to make perfectly clean, instead of washing), hang up to drain, and it is ready to be stuffed, skewered, and placed to roast. make it look plump, before stuffing, flatten the breast-bone by placing several thicknesses of cloth over it and pounding it, being careful not to break the skin, and rub the inside well with salt and pepper. Stuff the breast first, but not too full or it will burst in cooking; stuff the body rather fuller than the breast, sew up both openings with strong thread, and sew the skin of the neck over upon the back or down upon the breast (these threads must be carefully removed before sending to the table). Lay the points of the wings under the back, and fasten in that position with a skewer run through both wings and held in place with a twine; press the legs as closely towards the breast and side-bones as possible, and fasten with a skewer run through the body and both thighs, push a short skewer through above the tail, and tie the ends of legs down with a twine close upon the skewer (or, if skewers are not used, tie well in shape with twine); rub over thoroughly with salt and pepper, then lard, in the following manner: Hold the breast over a clear fire for a minute or dip it in boiling water. To make the flesh firm, cut strips of firm fat bacon, two inches long, and an eighth of an inch wide, and make four parallel marks on the breast, put one of these strips of bacon-fat (called lardoons) securely into the split end of small larding-needle, and insert it at the first mark, bringing it out at the second, leaving an equal length of fat protruding at each end; continue inserting these strips, at intervals of half an inch down these two lines, and then do the same with the two others. For poultry use a small larding-needle; the large ones are used for larding beef or veal. The process is very simple, and any one who likes to bring out dainty dishes, will be more than repaid for the little trouble in learning how. All white-fleshed birds are improved by larding (as well as veal and sweet-bread). Small birds, such as quails, may be more conveniently "barded" by placing a "barde," a slice of fat bacon, over the breast, and the same plan may be adopted in all cases where larding is inconvenient; or fat from the fowl itself may be used instead of bacon. When the flavor of bacon is disliked, put a table-spoon of butter in bits over the breast; never dredge with flour in the beginning. Now place to roast in an oven rather hot at first, and then graduate the heat to moderate until done, to test which insert a fork between the thigh and body; if the juice is watery and not bloody it is done. If not served at once, the fowl may be kept hot without drying up, by placing over a skillet full of boiling water (set on top of stove or range) and inverting a dripping-pan over it. Many persons roast fowls upon a wire rack or trivet placed inside the dripping-pan, or patty pans or muffin-rings may be used as rests. The pan should be three or even four inches deep, and measure at the bottom about sixteen by twenty inches, with sides somewhat flaring. Some put to roast in a dry pan, the larding or butter making sufficient drippings for basting; others add a very little water. In roasting a turkey, allow twenty minutes time for every pound, and twenty minutes longer. Some steam turkey before roasting, and a turkey-steamer may be easily improvised by placing the dripping-pan containing the turkey on top of two or three pieces of wood (hickory or maple is the best) laid in the bottom of a wash-boiler, with just enough water to cover the wood; put on the lid, which should fit tightly on the boiler, and as the water boils away add more. Add the liquor in the dripping-pan to the turkey when placed in the oven to roast (do not use the water from the boiler). In boiling fowl, put into hot water (unless soup is wanted, when place in cold); skim when it boils up first, and keep it just above the boiling point, but it must boil gently, not violently. A little vinegar added to the water in which they are boiled makes fowls more tender. For fuller directions see "Meats." Boil the giblets until tender in a separate dish, and add them, well chopped, together with water in which they were cooked, to the gravy.
This is an uncooked, raw-packed cucumber relish sealed in glass with cold vinegar and no heat processing at all. That method is why it cannot be recommended today, and the points below explain the specific failures along with the archaic terms in the text.
- No processing, no measured acidThe vegetables are salted, drained, packed cold, covered with vinegar of unstated strength and sealed. Nothing in the sequence brings the jar or its contents to a temperature that destroys spoilage organisms, and there is no way to know the finished acidity. Sealed jars of low-acid vegetables held at room temperature without verified acidity or a heat process are the classic setting for Clostridium botulinum, which grows without air and produces a toxin you cannot see, smell or taste.
- Onions raise the risk, not just the flavourCucumbers alone are borderline; six white onions in the mix push the pack further toward low acid, and chopped onion in an anaerobic oil- or brine-covered environment has a documented history of botulism outbreaks. Cold vinegar poured over chopped raw vegetables penetrates unevenly, leaving pockets of low-acid tissue at the centre of the mass.
- Nineteenth-century vinegar was not standardisedHousehold vinegar in the 1870s was often home-made cider vinegar of unknown and variable strength. Modern pickling recipes specify 5 percent acetic acid for exactly this reason. "Cover with cold vinegar" gives no acid figure, no water-to-vinegar ratio and no way to calculate the equilibrium pH of the packed jar.
- "Seal" meant something differentIn this period sealing meant wax, a cork, or a zinc lid with a rubber ring pressed onto a cold jar. That is a closure, not a vacuum seal, and it does not indicate that anything inside was made safe. If you want cucumber relish, use a current tested recipe with a stated vinegar strength and a boiling-water processing time.
- What the ingredients mean"Ripe" cucumbers here are mature, yellowing, thick-skinned fruit past the pickling stage, which is why they are pared and seeded. The "one ounce white mustard" is most likely whole white (yellow) mustard seed, roughly two to three tablespoons, rather than powdered mustard.
- The muslin bagChopping, salting and hanging the mixture in a cloth bag for twenty-four hours is a draining step, drawing water out so the pack is not diluted. It helps the texture and keeps the vinegar from being watered down, but it is not a preserving process in itself and does not make the pack safe.
- The poultry text is a printing overlapEverything after "Mrs. A. F. Conkey, Minneapolis, Minn." belongs to the book's instructions for killing, plucking, drawing, trussing and larding fowl, and has nothing to do with the pickle. Note that the turkey timing given there, twenty minutes per pound plus twenty, is far longer than modern practice.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping grew out of Ohio church and community compilations of the 1870s and circulated widely in revised editions, which is why so many of its receipts carry a contributor's name and town, in this case Minneapolis. Ripe cucumber pickles belonged to the end of the garden season: fruit that had swollen and yellowed on the vine was too coarse and seedy for whole-brined pickles, so it was pared, seeded, chopped and put down as a chopped relish rather than wasted. The book reflects a household economy in which vinegar and salt were the year's insurance against a glut, and in which "seal" meant closing a jar against the air with wax or a rubber-ringed lid. Reliable canning science, standardised vinegar strength and tested processing times came only with the twentieth-century agricultural extension services, which is the gap between this page and a recipe you could follow now.