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ONIONS, PICKLED (an easy method)
Peel the onions according to the directions already given. (See the last recipe but one). Put them as they are done into wide-mouthed glass bottles or earthen jars, place layers of spice amongst them, allowing an ounce of whole pepper, a tea-spoonful of mustard-seed, and a quarter of a tea-spoonful of coriander-seed to each quart of onions. Cover them with cold vinegar, and cork securely. As the vinegar is absorbed by the onions more should be added, so as to keep them well covered. Store in a cool, dry place. Probable cost of onions, 1s. to 1s. 6d. per gallon.
A cold-pack vinegar pickle with no boiling stage at all, which makes the strength of the vinegar the only thing standing between the onions and spoilage. Get that right and the rest is straightforward.
- Use vinegar of known strengthBuy a distilled or malt vinegar labelled 5 per cent acidity and use it undiluted. Victorian household vinegar varied widely, and the recipe relies entirely on acidity rather than heat to keep the onions.
- Keep them submerged, and refrigerateOnions genuinely do drink up the vinegar in the first fortnight, so top up as instructed. Treat the finished jars as a refrigerator pickle rather than a shelf-stable preserve: a corked jar in a cool larder was a nineteenth-century compromise, not a seal.
- Salting firstThe "directions already given" are not reproduced on this page, and the cross-reference is made for peeling. Pickling recipes of this period commonly have the peeled onions stand in dry salt or brine for a day or two before bottling; without that step the onions weep into the vinegar, thinning it and going limp.
- Spice quantitiesPer quart of onions: an ounce of whole black peppercorns is about 4 tablespoons, which is a lot by modern taste; half that is plenty. Mustard seed and coriander as given are fine. All spices should be whole, not ground, or the vinegar clouds.
- Vessels"Wide-mouthed glass bottles or earthen jars" means any glass jar with a non-reactive lid. Avoid bare metal lids, which vinegar corrodes, and avoid old glazed earthenware of unknown origin because of lead in the glaze.
- Choice of onionThe recipe does not specify a size, but small pickling or silverskin onions, roughly an inch across, are the usual subject of pickled-onion recipes of this period. Full-size onions cut into pieces will pickle but go soft.
- Waiting timeCold-pickled onions are harsh for the first month. Six to eight weeks brings them round; three months is better. Yield is roughly what you started with, a quart of onions filling one large jar.
Cold vinegar pickling was among the cheapest forms of preservation available to a Victorian kitchen: no fuel, no sugar, no long boiling, just a gallon of vinegar. Cassell's flags this as "an easy method." The pickled onion belonged to the bread-and-cheese end of the English table, and was made at home in autumn when small onions were at their cheapest. The stated price, one to one and sixpence a gallon, was pennies for a winter's worth of relish, and among the seasonings are coriander seed, pepper and mustard.