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Hot Pickle
Mince an ounce of shallots very finely, and put them into a stewpan with an ounce of whole ginger, two ounces of salt, a quarter of an ounce of mustard-seed, half an ounce of pepper, one-eighth of an ounce of cayenne, and half an ounce of allspice. Pour over them a quart of vinegar, and let the mixture boil. Put it into a jar and let it get cold, then add any fresh vegetables that are obtainable, such as cauliflowers, French beans, radish-pods, asparagus, or even green gooseberries and unripe apples. More pickle may be added when required, and vegetables as they come into season. Probable cost of pickle, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for as many vegetables as it will entirely cover.
A perpetual pickle jar rather than a single batch: you make a spiced vinegar once, then keep feeding it whatever the garden gives you. A few of the measures and assumptions need translating.
- The quart is imperialAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, roughly 4 3/4 US cups or 1.14 litres. Scale the spices down by about a fifth if you are working from a US quart.
- Ounces by weight, not spoonsEverything here is weighed. For reference, half an ounce of black pepper is about 2 tablespoons of peppercorns, an eighth of an ounce of cayenne about 1 1/2 teaspoons, and two ounces of salt roughly 1/4 cup of fine salt. Use a scale if you have one; the spice loading is deliberately fierce.
- Vinegar strength is the hingeThe preservation here comes entirely from acid. Use a vinegar labelled 5 per cent acidity (standard malt, cider or distilled); wine vinegars sold at 4 per cent and homemade vinegars of unknown strength are not reliable for this.
- Non-reactive panBoiling salted vinegar will strip a copper, aluminium or bare cast-iron stewpan and pick up a metallic taste. Stainless steel or enamelled cast iron only.
- Whole ginger means the dried rootIn Victorian usage "whole ginger" is a piece of dried, hard ginger root, bruised with a rolling pin before it goes in the pan. Dried root from an Indian grocer is closest; fresh ginger gives a brighter, less resinous result and adds water to the brine.
- Prepare the vegetables before they go inRaw vegetables carry a great deal of water, and each addition dilutes the vinegar that is doing the preserving. Salt cauliflower, beans and pods overnight, drain and dry them well, and keep the jar topped up with fresh spiced vinegar so everything stays fully submerged.
- Radish-pods and green gooseberriesRadish pods are the crisp seed pods that form when a radish bolts; they were a common kitchen-garden pickle and are worth growing for. Green gooseberries and unripe apples are used here for firmness and their own acidity, not for sweetness.
- Keep it cold and watch itThis is an open jar refilled over months, with no sealing or heat processing. Store it in the refrigerator, use clean utensils every time, discard anything that has risen above the liquid or grown a film, and treat it as a keeping pickle of a few months rather than a shelf-stable preserve.
- Cost and yieldOne shilling and sixpence was the probable cost of the spiced vinegar alone at the time the book was published. A quart will cover perhaps two to three pounds of prepared vegetables in a wide jar.
This is a method, not a dish: a standing jar of spiced vinegar that the cook replenishes as the kitchen garden comes on, cauliflower in high summer, French beans after, radish pods from the bolted rows, green gooseberries and windfall apples when nothing else is ready. The spicing, heavy on ginger, mustard seed, cayenne and allspice, is the Anglo-Indian palate that ran through Victorian British preserving and produced piccalilli and the many commercial "Indian pickles" sold in stoneware jars. Vinegar pickling of this kind long predates the empire trade.