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ONIONS, PICKLED (another way)
Prepare the onions as in the last recipe, but instead of throwing them when peeled into vinegar, throw them into brine sufficiently strong to bear an egg. Let them remain in this until the next day, then drain them, and lay them between two cloths to dry. Boil as much vinegar as will cover them, with half a tea-spoonful of coriander-seed, an inch of whole ginger, and an ounce of peppercorns to each quart. After the liquid has reached the boiling point, let it simmer gently for three minutes, and pour it out to cool. Put the onions into jars, divide the spices amongst them, and cover them entirely with the cooled vinegar. Cork securely, and cover the corks with bladder. Store for use. This pickle should not be used until it has been kept a month. Probable cost, onions, 1s. to 1s. 6d. per gallon.
A cold-poured vinegar pickle: the onions are salted overnight, dried, then covered with spiced vinegar that has been boiled and left to go cold. The instructions are sound, but several of the vessels and sealing materials have no modern equivalent.
- The hinge: cool the vinegar firstBoiling vinegar poured over raw onions cooks the outer layers and gives a softer, slippery pickle; letting it go cold before it touches the onions is what is generally held to keep them crisp. Note that the difference the recipe itself spells out from the preceding one is the brine rather than the vinegar's temperature.
- Brine "strong enough to bear an egg"This is a real test of strength, not a figure of speech, though what it indicates is only approximate: an egg begins to float in a brine of roughly 10 per cent salt, on the order of 4 oz of salt to a quart of water. Use plain salt without iodine or anti-caking agents, which can cloud the finished jars.
- Which onionsPickles of this type were normally made with small onions, peeled and left whole; the preceding recipe is not reproduced here, so its exact wording cannot be checked. Full-size onions quartered will work but never take on the same texture.
- The vinegar itselfMalt vinegar was widely used for English pickles of this period, though white wine vinegar is also called for where a pale pickle is wanted. Whatever you choose, use one labelled 5 per cent acidity and do not dilute it; the acid, not the sealing, is what preserves this pickle.
- Spice quantitiesHalf a teaspoon of coriander seed, an inch of whole dried ginger and an ounce of peppercorns per quart is a generous, sharply peppery mixture. An ounce is about 4 tablespoons of black peppercorns.
- Corks and bladderDried pig's bladder was tied over the cork as an airtight skin. Use clean glass jars with plastic-lined screw lids or glass-and-clamp closures; bare metal lids corrode in vinegar and taint the pickle.
- StorageA month's maturing is right — the raw onion heat needs that long to fade. Modern practice is to keep the jars in the refrigerator or a cold larder rather than an ambient cupboard, and to discard any jar that looks cloudy or fizzes on opening.
- YieldA quart of spiced vinegar will cover roughly 2 lb of prepared small onions, filling two to three 1-pint jars depending on how closely the onions pack.
Pickled onions were one of the cheapest preserves in the Victorian larder, and the price note — a shilling to eighteen pence a gallon — shows they were sold by volume rather than weight, in the quantities a household would put down at the end of summer. Cassell's gives several methods, among them hot vinegar for a softer, quicker pickle and cold for a crisp one meant to keep. The preliminary salting draws out water so the vinegar is not weakened in the jar, the same reasoning behind salting cucumbers before pickling them. The instruction to seal with cork and bladder places the recipe before the domestic screw-top jar became common — bladder was the ordinary household sealant for jams and pickles alike, tied on damp and left to shrink tight as it dried.