Home › The Principles of Cookery › Artichoke Bottoms, to Pickle
Artichoke Bottoms, to Pickle
Parboil the artichokes; pull out the leaves, and do not remove the choke. Allow them to cool; put them into pickle-bottles. Boil sufficient vinegar to fill up the bottles, adding to every quart of vinegar a dessert-spoonful of salt, a small tea-spoonful of white pepper, and a blade of mace. Simmer it for twenty minutes. Put it aside, and when cold pour it into the bottles, which must be corked closely. Probable cost, 1s. for a pint bottle.
This is a preserving recipe rather than a dish to eat the same day, and it is the preserving method that rules it out. The notes below explain the archaic terms and then why the process cannot be trusted.
- Why this fails: no known acid strengthArtichokes are a low-acid vegetable, and the safety of a vinegar pickle depends entirely on the finished acidity of the brine. Victorian vinegar varied widely in strength and was often home-made or adulterated, and the recipe gives no dilution, no target acidity and no way to verify it. Modern acidified artichoke recipes specify vinegar of at least 5 per cent acetic acid and a measured ratio to the vegetable for exactly this reason.
- Why this fails: cold fill and no heat processThe pickle is boiled, then deliberately set aside and poured over the artichokes cold, and the bottles are never processed in a water bath. Nothing in the sequence brings the packed jar to a temperature that kills spoilage organisms, and the acid has to penetrate dense, whole artichoke bottoms by diffusion alone at room temperature.
- Why this fails: cork closureA corked bottle is not an airtight seal. It admits air and mould over weeks of storage and cannot be checked for a vacuum, so there is no signal that the pack has failed. Low-acid vegetables held anaerobically at room temperature are the classic setting for Clostridium botulinum, and its toxin gives no smell or taste warning.
- The choke, left in on purposeNote the instruction not to remove the choke; the recipe gives no reason for it. Left in, it adds fibrous material that slows acid penetration, compounding the problem above.
- Archaic measures, for readingA dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons, roughly 10 ml. A blade of mace is a single flattened piece of the dried aril of nutmeg, sold whole in spice shops; about half a teaspoon of ground mace is the usual equivalent by flavour.
- "Probable cost, 1s."One shilling for a pint bottle was a substantial sum for the period, which suggests these were closer to a delicacy for garnishing than an everyday store-cupboard item.
- If you want pickled artichokesUse a current tested recipe from a food-safety authority, which will specify vinegar strength, acid-to-vegetable ratio, jar size and water-bath processing time. Do not adapt the timings above.
Artichoke bottoms — the fleshy base left when the leaves and outer bracts are stripped away — were a standing item in nineteenth-century professional kitchens, used as edible cups for salpicons, mushroom ragoûts and poached eggs, or sliced into garnishes. Globe artichokes have a short season in Britain and do not keep well, so preserving the bottoms in vinegar or drying them was one answer. The "probable cost" quoted alongside each recipe is a characteristic feature of the household dictionaries of the 1870s and 80s. Bottling and pickling at home was routine in that period and lightly regulated; the science of acidity and heat processing that governs the practice today was largely worked out after this book was written.