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Fennel, Pickled
Fennel should be tied into bunches, and put into a pan of boiling salted water, and when scalded enough, laid on a cloth till dry. When cold, fill glasses with the fennel, and cover with cold vinegar. Add a little nutmeg and mace, and tie down with a bladder and leather to keep out the air. Time, three or four minutes.
A cold-pack vinegar pickle of the simplest kind: blanch, dry, cover, seal. Almost everything that needs updating is in the vessel and the storage rather than the method.
- Which fennelThis is herb fennel — the tender young stalks and feathery tops that Victorian kitchens used for fish sauce — not the swollen Florence bulb sold today. Bulb fennel can be pickled the same way, but cut into wedges it will need longer than three or four minutes to scald through.
- The scald is the hingeThree to four minutes in boiling salted water sets the colour and softens the stalks without collapsing them. Drain and dry thoroughly on a cloth as directed; water clinging to the fennel dilutes the vinegar and can leave the pickle cloudy or soft.
- "Glasses"Straight-sided preserving jars or wide-mouth canning jars. Pack the bunches upright and fill so the vinegar covers everything by half an inch; anything standing above the liquid will discolour.
- VinegarUse a vinegar labelled 5 per cent acidity — plain white or cider. The acid is the only thing preserving this pickle, so it should not be diluted with water or a mild dressing vinegar.
- SpicesMace is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed, sold as blades or ground. Whole blades and a few slivers of whole nutmeg keep the vinegar clear; ground spice will settle as sediment. Roughly a blade of mace and a quarter teaspoon of grated nutmeg per pint is in keeping.
- Bladder and leatherA cleaned pig's bladder tied over the mouth, with a leather cap above it, shrank as it dried to give a tight seal. A modern two-piece canning lid or a plastic-lined screw cap does the same job.
- StorageBecause nothing here is heat-processed in the jar, treat it as a refrigerator pickle: keep it cold and use within a couple of months. Give it a week before opening for the spices to come through.
- Yield and useThe recipe gives no quantity or serving direction. Pickled fennel suits oily fish such as mackerel or herring, chopped small, or can stand in for capers in a sharp sauce.
Fennel and fish have been paired in English kitchens since at least the medieval period, and by the nineteenth century fennel sauce for mackerel and salmon was common enough that a preserved supply would have been useful out of season — the same logic that put nasturtium buds, samphire and green walnuts into jars of spiced vinegar. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery was issued in parts in London in the 1870s as an alphabetical household reference, and gives the method in the barest form. The nutmeg and mace belong to an older, heavily spiced style of preserving, and the bladder-and-leather closure was standard before reliable glass lids and rubber rings.