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Strawberry Pickles
Place strawberries in bottom of jar, add a layer of cinnamon and cloves, then berries, and so on; pour over it a syrup made of two coffee-cups cider vinegar, and three pints sugar, boiled about five minutes; let stand twenty-four hours, pour off syrup, boil, pour over berries, and let stand as before, then boil berries and syrup slowly for twenty-five minutes; put in jars and cover. The above is for six quarts of berries. Pine apples can be made in same way, allowing six and a half pounds of fruit to above proportions. --Mrs. T. W. Jones, Charleston, S. C.
A Victorian sweet pickle, meaning fruit preserved in spiced sugar-vinegar syrup and served alongside roast meat rather than eaten as dessert. The method depends on repeated draws rather than long cooking, and the quantities are large enough that most cooks will want to scale down.
- The hinge: the three-day drawThe hinge: the standing periods -- The point of standing the fruit for two 24-hour periods, with the syrup drained and reboiled between them, is osmotic: sugar enters the berries gradually and water leaves, so they firm up instead of collapsing. Skipping the standing periods and going straight to the 25-minute boil gives you spiced strawberry mush.
- A coffee-cupIn this period a coffee-cup is taken as roughly a standard cup, though it was never a fixed measure. Two coffee-cups of cider vinegar is about 2 cups; if your cups run small, err on the generous side, since the vinegar is what preserves the fruit.
- Three pints of sugarSugar was measured by volume here, not weight. Three pints is 6 cups, about 2 lb 10 oz of granulated sugar.
- Scale it downSix quarts of strawberries is roughly 9 lb of fruit and will fill a preserving pan most home cooks do not own. A quarter batch — 1.5 quarts berries, 1/2 cup vinegar, 1.5 cups sugar — behaves the same way.
- The syrup looks shortTwo cups of liquid for six quarts of fruit seems impossible until the first standing period, when the berries give up a great deal of juice. Do not add water to make up the difference.
- SpicesUse whole stick cinnamon and whole cloves, layered as directed and fished out at the end or left in the jar. Ground spice will cloud the syrup and turn the berries muddy grey-brown. A tablespoon of cloves and three or four sticks of cinnamon suits the full batch; cloves dominate quickly.
- Choose the fruit accordinglySmall, firm, slightly underripe berries hold together through two soakings and a 25-minute simmer. Large supermarket strawberries are bred for water content and will slump.
- Sealing and storage"Put in jars and cover" reflects 1870s practice and is not a canning instruction. This is a high-acid, high-sugar preserve, but if you want it shelf-stable, follow current tested water-bath processing times for sweet fruit pickles; otherwise refrigerate and use within a few weeks.
- Yield and servingThe full quantity gives several pints of finished pickle. Serve cold in small amounts with ham, cold roast pork, game or a cheese board — the vinegar is assertive and the fruit is meant as a condiment.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877), compiled in Ohio from contributions sent in by named women across the country, includes recipes for sweet pickles — a category that puzzles modern readers because the fruit is neither jam nor pickle as we now use the word. Through the nineteenth century, spiced fruit in vinegar syrup was standard accompaniment to heavy roast and salt meat, filling the same place on the table that cranberry sauce or chutney does today, and peaches, pears, cherries, plums, watermelon rind and crab apples all got the same cinnamon-and-clove treatment. Strawberries were an unusual choice because they are so fragile, which is exactly why the recipe uses the patient draw-and-reboil method instead of a single long cooking. The attribution to Mrs. T. W. Jones of Charleston is typical of the book's structure: recipes were solicited by name and town, with pineapple noted here as an alternative.