Home › The Principles of Cookery › Indian Pickle
Indian Pickle
Place in a large dish a white cabbage cut into eight divisions, half a pound of small branches of cauliflower, equal quantities of gherkins, French beans, radish-pods, and small onions, also nasturtiums, capsicums, chillies, and any other suitable vegetables. Powder them well with salt, and let them remain for a day or two. Drain dry, and put them into a jar, with sufficient vinegar to cover: the vinegar, having been previously boiled, should be poured into the jar cold. Be careful to let the vinegar cover the vegetables, or the pickle will not keep, and to mix the spice equally among the vegetables before the vinegar is poured over them. Use spice as follows--the quantity given is for a gallon of vinegar--three ounces of ginger sliced, the same of black and long pepper mixed, twenty shallots, peeled, one clove of garlic, or more if the flavour is not objected to, a quarter of an ounce of cayenne, a quarter of a pound of flour of mustard, two ounces of salt, an ounce of turmeric, and two ounces of mustard-seed. Fruit, such as green grapes, codling apples, etc., may be added at any time as they appear in season; but the proportions of spice and vinegar must be attended to, and any addition to the jar should be first soaked an hour or two in vinegar before being added. When no more additions are to be made, put the pickles into small jars, boil the vinegar, pour it at once over the pickles so as to cover them, and, when cold, tie down with bladder. If the above directions are attended to this pickle may be kept good many years. When more spice and vinegar are required, mix the spice with a little of the cold vinegar first, and then boil it. When boiled, pour it hot over the pickles.
A mixed vegetable pickle of the Anglo-Indian type, built up in a communal jar over a season. The hinge is the last line of the first half: the vinegar must cover everything, always, or the pickle spoils.
- Vinegar strengthThe recipe does not say which vinegar; malt vinegar, at roughly 5 per cent acetic acid, is the likely intention. Use a vinegar labelled 5 per cent or stronger; salad vinegars diluted to 4 per cent will not preserve reliably, and the whole method depends on acid rather than heat.
- A gallon of vinegarThe spice quantities are given per imperial gallon, which is 4.5 litres or about 1.2 US gallons. For a domestic batch of two or three quart jars, scale the whole spice list to a quarter or a fifth.
- Long pepperPiper longum, a hotter, sweeter relative of black pepper sold in catkin-like spikes. Indian and specialist spice shops carry it; if you cannot find it, use black pepper for the full three ounces rather than substituting chilli.
- Flour of mustardSimply ground mustard, what is now sold as mustard powder. A quarter pound to the gallon is what gives this pickle its thick, clinging, piccalilli-yellow liquor alongside the ounce of turmeric.
- Radish-pods and capsicumsRadish pods are the green seed pods that form if radishes bolt; grow your own or use small green beans. "Capsicums" here probably means larger, milder pepper pods as distinct from the "chillies" listed separately, though the two words were often used interchangeably.
- The salting stageDry-salting for a day or two draws out water so the vegetables stay crisp and do not dilute the vinegar. Drain thoroughly and pat dry; do not rinse away all the salt, and do not shorten this step.
- Cold vinegar first, hot vinegar lastThe initial cold pour keeps the vegetables crunchy while the jar is still being added to. The final boiling pour, when nothing more is going in, pasteurises the surface and drives out air.
- Tying down with bladderDried pig's bladder was a common close-fitting cover of the period. Use glass jars with vinegar-proof lids: bare metal lids corrode and taint the pickle. Once opened, keep the jar refrigerated and the contents submerged.
"Indian pickle" is the English name for the mixed, mustard-and-turmeric pickles that came back with the East India trade in imitation of Indian achar, and eighteenth-century cookery books already list "India pickle" and "paco lilla" among their preserves; the word piccalilli is generally traced to that same cluster of spellings. What distinguishes the English version from its models is the mustard flour and the reliance on vinegar rather than oil and sun-curing. The method here, a standing jar in the larder to which cauliflower, beans, nasturtium buds, green grapes and codlings are added as each comes into season, belongs to a household that preserved continuously through the growing year rather than in single batches, and the promise that it "may be kept good many years" reflects a kitchen where a well-managed pickle jar was a fixture rather than a project.