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Cucumber Pickles
Place the cucumbers in rather thick layers in a jar and sprinkle each layer with salt, using perhaps a cupful to a hundred mediumsized cucumbers, and cover with water. In the morning turn off the brine, scald it and pour over them. Do this three mornings; the fourth morning drain. Scald vinegar (in proportion of one quart to a hundred) with a bag of spices and pour over the pickles, add a small piece of alum and cover all with horseradish leaves. Then cover the jar closely and they will keep until eaten.
— Mrs. Charles E. Willard
This is a room-temperature brine-and-vinegar cure with no measured acid strength, no weights, and no temperature anywhere in the process. The points below explain where it fails rather than how to rescue it.
- The acid is far too littleOne quart of vinegar to a hundred cucumbers cannot cover the fruit, let alone acidify it. Current guidance for cucumber pickles calls for vinegar of at least 5 percent acidity, in enough volume to cover, so that the finished liquid — diluted by the water the cucumbers themselves release — stays safely acid (below pH 4.6). A quart poured over several gallons of vegetables is nowhere near that, and an under-acidified pickle in a closely covered jar is exactly the condition that guidance against Clostridium botulinum is written to prevent.
- The salt brine is not a cureAbout a cupful of salt to a hundred cucumbers, then "cover with water," gives a brine of unknown and almost certainly very low strength. Proper salt-brine fermentation of cucumbers uses a weighed percentage of salt to weighed water and is held at a controlled temperature for weeks. This is a light holding brine that is drained away on the fourth morning, so it contributes nothing lasting.
- Reused brine, scalded and returnedPouring off the liquid, scalding it and returning it three mornings running is a common direction in receipts of this period, usually understood as a way of keeping scum down. Scalding kills what is in the liquid at that moment but does nothing about what is already inside the cucumbers, and no storage temperature is given for the nights the jar stands under-acidified.
- "Cover closely and they will keep until eaten"There is no processing step, no sterilised sealed jar, no headspace, and no cool storage specified. A tightly covered crock of low-acid vegetables held at room temperature is precisely the anaerobic, low-acid condition that food safety guidance for pickles is written to prevent.
- AlumPotassium alum was added to firm the flesh. It is no longer recommended for pickling: it does little for texture in a properly made pickle, can leave a bitter astringency, and is easy to overdose when the direction is "a small piece." Modern crisping relies on calcium chloride or simply on fresh, cold cucumbers and short heating.
- Horseradish leaves and "a bag of spices"The leaves are a traditional covering said to discourage mould, used much as grape, oak and cherry leaves were; the tannin explanation is received tradition rather than a demonstrated effect, and the leaves are not a preservative in any measurable sense. The spice bag is undefined, which suggests a cook who already had a standing mix on the shelf.
- If you want picklesUse a current tested recipe with weighed salt, a stated vinegar acidity, and either refrigeration or a boiling-water process with a timed hold. Do not adapt the proportions above.
Community cookbooks like this one collected receipts by name from the women of a town, and pickles are well represented in them. The technique here — successive mornings of drained, scalded brine before a spiced vinegar and a covering of leaves — is a nineteenth-century farmhouse pattern that predates any household means of measuring acidity; cooks judged a pickle by smell, firmness and whether the crock threw scum. Alum and horseradish or grape leaves recur constantly in such receipts, the first for crispness and the second as a covering against mould. The vagueness of "perhaps a cupful to a hundred medium-sized cucumbers" suggests a recipe meant to jog the memory of someone who had already watched it done rather than to instruct a stranger.