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Onions, Pickled
Onions, like all other pickles, are considered more wholesome, though less handsome, when prepared at home, than when bought at the warehouses. Home-made pickled onions are besides quite as expensive. The small silver onions are generally used for pickling, and should be obtained as soon as possible after they are harvested, as they are then in the best condition. This will be about the middle of August. Peel the onions until they look clear, being careful not to cut the bulb. If a little warm water be poured over them the task will not be quite so disagreeable. Throw them as they are peeled into a bowl of white-wine vinegar, and when they are all finished strain the vinegar into an enamelled stewpan, with an ounce of whole peppercorns, a dessert-spoonful of salt, and an inch of whole ginger to each quart. Boil gently for five minutes, let the liquid cool, and pour it over the onions. It must be boiled again twice before the onions are fastened up, and should be sufficient to cover them entirely. Put the pickle into jars, cork securely, and cover them with bladder, then store for use. If it is preferred, instead of boiling the vinegar three times, the onions may be thrown into it when boiling, and simmered gently for two minutes. Probable cost, onions, 1s. or 1s. 6d. per gallon.
A straightforward high-acid vinegar pickle, written for a cook who has a bladder and a cork to hand. The method holds up; the packaging does not.
- The hinge: keep the vinegar strongThe preservation here is entirely acid, so use a vinegar of at least 5 per cent acetic acid and never dilute it with water. White wine vinegar gives the pale colour the recipe wants; distilled malt or cider vinegar work equally well and cost less.
- Silver onionsThese are the small white pickling onions sold as silverskins; the US 'boiling onion' is a related but generally larger small white onion. Frozen pearl onions are a poor substitute, having been blanched, and go soft. Buy them freshly harvested and firm, and keep the root plate intact when peeling or the layers separate in the jar.
- PeelingThe warm water trick works, but a two-minute pour of boiling water followed by cold water loosens the skins better. Trim the neck, nick the root only, and drop the peeled onions straight into vinegar as directed so they do not brown.
- SaltA dessert-spoonful is two teaspoons. Most modern recipes salt the onions before pickling rather than only in the liquor — 24 hours in dry salt or a strong brine, then rinsed and drained, draws out water and keeps them crisp. The book's method skips this and the onions will be softer for it.
- Spice quantitiesAn ounce of whole peppercorns per quart is around 28 g, which is heavy-handed by current taste; a tablespoon is nearer the mark. The "inch of whole ginger" means a piece of dried root ginger, not fresh — bruise it before it goes in.
- Boiling three times, or onceThe triple-boiling may reflect weaker and more variable vinegars, and is in any case unnecessary with a standardised product. Take the second option: bring the spiced vinegar to a boil, drop the onions in, simmer two minutes, and pack hot. Longer cooking turns them limp.
- Jars, not bladderCork and bladder are gone; use glass preserving jars with vinegar-proof lids, as bare metal corrodes and taints the pickle. Fill so the liquid covers the onions completely — any onion above the surface will discolour and spoil.
- Storage and yieldLeave the jars at least six weeks before opening; the raw bite needs that long to mellow. As a rough guide a quart of spiced vinegar will cover something in the region of 2 lb of peeled onions, though this depends on how tightly they are packed; sealed jars should keep well in a cool dark cupboard, refrigerated once opened.
The opening line is the interesting part: home-made pickles are "more wholesome, though less handsome" than shop-bought. Victorian commercial picklers were widely suspected of brightening their wares with copper salts, which greened vegetables handsomely and poisoned slowly. Pickled onions themselves were a fixture of the British cold table long before that — cheap, keeping through winter, and eaten with bread, cheese and cold meat in the arrangement later christened the ploughman's lunch. The mid-August timing is not decorative: it is the season named in the recipe as the best condition for lifting silverskin onions. The quoted price, a shilling to eighteenpence a gallon, is the sort of detail Cassell's supplied throughout so a mistress could check what her cook was spending.