Home › The Principles of Cookery › Nasturtium Pickle
Nasturtium Pickle
The buds and seeds of the nasturtium are both used for pickle. The former are the more delicate, the latter the more highly flavoured. The buds should be gathered before the petals protrude beyond the calyx, the seeds while they are quite young and as soft as green peas. All that is necessary is to gather them on a dry day, put them at once into a jar, cover them well with cold vinegar, and when the harvest is over cork them down tightly. A little seasoning may either be put into the vinegar or not. It may consist of two ounces of salt and a dozen peppercorns to each quart of vinegar. At the end of a few months this pickle will be found to be very nicely flavoured. Time, to be kept twelve months before being used. Probable cost, uncertain, nasturtium buds and seeds being seldom sold.
A cold-pack vinegar pickle that needs no cooking at all — the only real variables are the ripeness of what you gather and the strength of the vinegar.
- Vinegar strength is the hingeThe preservation here depends entirely on acidity, so use a vinegar labelled 5 per cent acetic acid (standard distilled white, cider or malt wine vinegar). Do not dilute it, and avoid artisanal vinegars of unstated strength for a cold pack that will sit for months.
- What to pickFlower buds, gathered before the petals push past the green calyx, and the plump green seed pods that follow the flowers. Both come from Tropaeolum majus, the common garden nasturtium, not watercress (Nasturtium officinale), which shares the botanical name but is not what is meant.
- Seeds "as soft as green peas"This is the test that matters. Once the pod hardens and begins to pale toward tan, it turns woody and stays that way in the jar. Pick over a couple of weeks as they form rather than waiting for a single harvest.
- Dry day, dry budsSurface water dilutes the vinegar at the very point where the pickle is weakest. Pick in the afternoon after any dew has gone and do not rinse; if you must wash off soil, dry thoroughly on a cloth first.
- The seasoning quantitiesTwo ounces of salt is roughly three to four tablespoons by volume depending on the grain — a fair amount, and it is for flavour rather than safety here, since the acid does the preserving. A dozen peppercorns per quart is mild; a bay leaf, a few coriander seeds or a sliced shallot are period-appropriate additions.
- Jars and lidsUse glass with a vinegar-proof lid — plastic-lined metal or glass-and-rubber. Bare metal lids corrode and taint the brine. "Cork them down tightly" implies a narrow-necked vessel; a clean screw-top jar does the same job. Keep the buds submerged, topping up with vinegar as you add each day's picking.
- TimingThe text says a few months for good flavour and twelve months before use; three to six weeks in a cool dark cupboard is enough to make them pleasant, and they hold for a year or more. Refrigerate once opened.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; use enough vinegar to cover the buds or seeds well, as the text directs. Use them as you would capers — in butter sauce for fish, in a remoulade, on a cheese board — a teaspoon at a time, since the mustard-oil heat is considerable.
Nasturtium seeds have been the standard English caper substitute since at least the eighteenth century, when true capers were an imported luxury and the plant itself, a South American import whose arrival in Europe is usually placed in the later seventeenth century, grew freely in any kitchen garden. Both plants carry a sharp pungency rom the the same mustard-oil compounds found in cress and horseradish ab which is why the swap works on the plate as well as in the purse. Cassell's closing note that the cost is "uncertain, nasturtium buds and seeds being seldom sold" is the telling detail: this was a recipe for people with a garden, not a shopping list, and the raw material cost nothing but the walk outside.