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Shallot Pickle
Shallot pickle is prepared in the same way as garlic pickle, that is to say, as follows. Steep one quarter of a pound of ginger in strong salt and water for five days. At the end of that time cut it into slices, and dry it in the sun; put it into a large stone jar with a gallon of the best white-wine vinegar. Peel one pound of garlic or shallot, salt it well, and let it stand in the salt for three days. Wipe it, and dry it in the sun, then put it into the pickle. Add also to the pickle a quarter of a pound of long pepper steeped in salt and water and well dried, one pound of bruised mustard-seed, and a quarter of a pound of turmeric. Shake these ingredients well in the jar, and add anything that it is desirable to pickle as it comes into season, salting and drying it previously in the sun. When completed, the pickle should be kept for a year or two. When that time has expired, it will be found to be excellent. The flavour of shallots may be obtained by placing them in a bottle of cold vinegar: in a month they will be found to have imparted their flavour to the vinegar, which may be used for flavouring sauces, or other culinary purposes, as required.
This is an Anglo-Indian style mixed pickle rather than a jar of pickled shallots — the shallots go into a spiced vinegar master-pickle that is meant to be fed with other vegetables through the year. A few things need translating before you start.
- The hinge: everything must be salted and dried firstEach addition is salted, wiped and dried before it goes in. Skipping that step lets vegetable water leach into the vinegar, dropping the acidity of the whole jar and spoiling it. If you add anything, treat it exactly as the ginger and shallots are treated.
- Sun-dryingThe recipe assumes hot dry sun and gives no drying time. A dehydrator at 130-140F, or an oven at its lowest setting with the door ajar, does the same job in hours. The aim is surface dryness and a little wilt, not a brittle chip.
- Long pepperPiper longum, the elongated catkin-like relative of black pepper, standard in Victorian Indian-style pickles and still sold by Indian and specialist spice merchants. Black peppercorns are the nearest substitute, though noticeably less sweet and resinous.
- Quantities are enormousA gallon of vinegar, a pound of mustard seed and a quarter-pound each of turmeric and long pepper will need a crock of roughly two gallons. Scaling to a quarter — a quart of vinegar, 4 oz shallots, 1 oz ginger, 4 oz mustard seed, 1 oz each turmeric and long pepper — gives a manageable large jar.
- The gingerSteeping it five days in brine and only then slicing it points to fresh (green) ginger rather than the dried root. A quarter pound is about 113 g, roughly a large hand.
- Vinegar strength"The best white-wine vinegar" meant a full-strength product. Use one labelled at least 5 per cent acidity and do not dilute it; the vinegar is the only thing preserving the jar.
- VesselA glazed stoneware jar or wide-mouth glass. No bare metal lids, no aluminium or copper — the vinegar and salt will corrode them and taint the pickle.
- Keeping itSolids must stay under the surface of the vinegar; anything standing proud will go mouldy. The instruction to keep it a year or two is real — the raw mustard and turmeric harshness takes months to settle. Store cool and dark, and refrigerate once you are opening it often.
- The shallot vinegar at the endA separate, much simpler idea: peeled shallots left a month in cold vinegar give a flavoured vinegar for sauces and dressings. Strain the shallots out once it tastes as you want it.
Cassell's places this among a run of pickles that came into English kitchens by way of British India, where a stone jar of achar was kept in the storeroom and topped up with whatever the season produced — the turmeric, long pepper, mustard seed and salted sun-dried ginger are the standard signature of that tradition rather than of any native English pickle. Garlic and shallot are offered as alternatives in a single method; the shallot, whose origin is uncertain and usually placed in central or south-west Asia, was long known in Europe as the "Ascalon onion", a name traditionally derived from the Latin ascalonia, after Ascalon. It was valued mainly for the sharp aromatic edge it gave to sauces and vinegars, which is exactly the use the closing sentence recommends. The instruction to keep the jar a year or two is a reminder that a well-run Victorian household measured its stores in seasons, and that a pickle crock was a running account rather than a single batch.