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Virginia Mixed Pickle
One-half peek green tomatoes, twenty-five medium-sized cucum-- bers, fifteen large white onions, one-half peck small onions, four heads cabbages, one pint grated horse radish, one-half pound white mustard-seed, one-fourth pound ground mustard, one-half tea-cup ground black pepper, one-half pint salad oil, one ounce celery seed, one-half ounce ground cinnamon, two ounces turmeric. Slice the tomatoes and large onions, cut cabbage as for slaw, quarter cucumbers lengthwise, cut in pieces two inches long, leaving the peel on, and add the small onions whole. Mix with salt thoroughly, let stand twenty-four hours; drain off the juice, and pour vinegar and water over pickles. Let stand a day or two, strain again as dry as possible; mix the spices well except the ground mustard, then boil one and one-half gallons fresh apple vinegar and pour boiling hot over the pickles; do this three mornings in succession, using the same vinegar each time. The third time add one pound of sugar to the vinegar and boil, pouring over as above; also mix the oil and ground mustard together with a small portion of the vinegar, and add when cold. Oil can be omitted if not relished. - Mrs. M. B. Sperry, Nashville, Tenn.
This is a full crock batch built for a household that ate pickle daily through winter. Read the vinegar step first: the pickles are never cooked, only scalded by successive pourings, and that is what keeps them crisp.
- "One-half peek" is a typo for peckA peck is 8 dry quarts, so half a peck of green tomatoes is about 4 quarts, roughly 6 to 7 lb. The same measure applies to the small onions.
- Total yieldAs written this makes several gallons of finished pickle -- easily a crock's worth -- and calls for a gallon and a half of vinegar. Quartering or eighthing the whole list is sensible; the proportions scale straight down.
- The three-morning pour is the hingeThe same vinegar is reheated and poured boiling over the drained vegetables on three consecutive days. Each round draws out more water and drives in acid without ever simmering the cucumbers, which is why they stay firm. Skipping to a single boil gives a softer, wetter pickle.
- Apple vinegar strengthNineteenth-century farm cider vinegar varied widely in acidity. Use commercial cider vinegar at 5 percent and do not dilute it for the three pourings; the earlier "vinegar and water" soak is a separate, weaker rinse stage.
- Salad oilThis means a bland table oil, most often olive, though cottonseed oil was also sold as salad oil by this date. Any neutral oil works. It is stirred with the ground mustard and a little vinegar and added cold so the mustard does not cook out its bite; the oil will separate on standing and needs stirring before serving.
- Turmeric and mustard quantitiesTwo ounces of turmeric and a quarter pound of ground mustard are correct, not misprints. They supply the yellow colour and the heat of the whole style; expect the brine to stain everything it touches.
- Fresh horseradishA pint of grated horseradish means the fresh root, not the creamed jarred sauce. Grate it in a well-ventilated spot. Note that the original mixes it in with the other spices, before the boiling vinegar goes over, and its pungency fades with heat and time.
- StorageThe original assumed a cool cellar and a stone crock under a tight cover. Keep the finished pickle refrigerated in clean jars, or follow current tested canning directions if you want it shelf-stable; the oil-and-mustard addition in particular makes this a refrigerator pickle rather than a canning project.
Buckeye Cookery (1877) was assembled from recipes sent in by housekeepers across the country, which is why this one carries a contributor's name and a Nashville address, and why a Virginia-titled pickle sits in an Ohio book. Large mixed pickles of this kind — cabbage, cucumber, onion and green tomato bound together with mustard and turmeric — are generally traced to the British colonial taste for Indian-style "mixed pickle," and are often said to be close cousins to piccalilli and to the American chow-chow. The green tomatoes point to the season it belonged to: an end-of-summer clearing of the garden before frost, put down in quantity because a jar of something sharp was expected at every meal of salt meat and potatoes through the cold months.