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Limes, to Preserve
Take half a dozen limes; make three or four slight cuts in the rind of each, rub them well with two ounces of salt, and put them in a warm place, turning them occasionally, until they are softened, which will be in about five days. Boil as much vinegar as will cover them, with a quarter of a pound of mustard-seed, a quarter of a pound of bruised ginger, and one ounce of whole pepper, to each quart. Put the softened limes with the salt, etc., into a jar; pour the boiling vinegar upon them, and let them stand for twenty-four hours. Tie a skin over the top, and store in a cool, dry place.
This is an Anglo-Indian lime pickle written for a Victorian larder. Nothing about it is difficult, but two things decide whether it works: the limes must be fully softened by the salt before the vinegar goes near them, and everything must stay submerged afterwards.
- The hinge: soften the limes properlyThe recipe allows "about five days", but the test is the limes, not the calendar: undersalted, undersoftened limes stay leathery and bitter, and no amount of standing in vinegar afterwards will fix it. Keep them somewhere genuinely warm, turn them from time to time as the recipe directs, and go by whether the rinds give under a thumb.
- Quantities and yieldSix limes, 2 oz (about 60 g) salt, and enough vinegar to cover — for six limes packed into a jar that is usually 1 to 1.5 pints. The spicing is given per quart of vinegar: 4 oz mustard seed, 4 oz bruised ginger, 1 oz whole peppercorns. Scale the spices to the vinegar you actually boil. Makes one medium jar.
- Bruised gingerIn cookery books of this period this usually means dried whole ginger root, cracked with a rolling pin or the flat of a knife, rather than fresh or ground; the recipe itself does not say. Fresh ginger can be used in thick slices.
- Vinegar strengthUse a vinegar of at least 5 per cent acidity — malt or cider both suit the spicing. The acid, not the seal, is what preserves this. Diluted or low-acid vinegars are the usual reason a pickle of this kind goes soft or mouldy.
- Non-reactive pan and jarBoil the spiced vinegar in stainless steel or enamel, never bare iron, aluminium or copper. Use a glass jar with a plastic-coated or plastic lid; hot vinegar will corrode a bare metal one and taint the pickle.
- "Tie a skin over the top"A bladder or parchment tied down with string, the usual pre-lid closure, which kept dust and air off the surface. A screw lid is better. Whichever you use, the limes must stay under the vinegar — a small weight or a scrunched square of baking parchment keeps floaters down, and anything above the surface will mould.
- Maturing and keepingThe twenty-four hours only starts the process. A pickle of this kind is generally better for some months' keeping, by which time the rind softens further and the vinegar loses its harshness. Store cool and dark; refrigerate once opened.
Preserved limes reached English cookery books by way of India, where salting citrus in the sun — nimbu ka achar — is a long-established domestic preserve, and the spicing here, mustard seed, ginger and pepper in vinegar, is one Anglo-Indian translation of it into a British larder idiom. Cassell's was compiled for households in the later nineteenth century, when hot lime and mango preserves were served on the cold table alongside chutney and piccalilli. The method is really two preserving techniques stacked: a dry salt cure to draw water from the rind and break down its bitterness, then an acid pack to hold it. That the recipe assumes a warm place available for five days, and a skin rather than a lid, marks it as pre-refrigeration writing for a kitchen where such a pickle was expected to sit in the store cupboard for a season or more.