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Mustard Pickles (Two heads cauliflower)
Two heads cauliflower, twenty-four small or twelve large cucumbers, one quart small white onions, two heads celery, six green peppers, two quarts green tomatoes; wash and cut vegetables in inch-size pieces, take out seeds from peppers, place all in pans; mix four quarts cold water and one pound salt, pour over vegetables and let stand over night.
In the morning place pan over fire with vegetables and brine; soon as they begin to boil remove from fire and drain. Mix one cup flour, one-half pound mustard, one-half ounce tumeric with cold vinegar; put three quarts of vinegar over fire and when it begins to boil mix the above in and boil two minutes, then remove from fire and pour over vegetables. When cold put in jars.
— Mrs. Jesse Little
A classic late-season mustard pickle — piccalilli by another name — built on a brine soak, a brief scald, and a hot mustard-turmeric sauce thickened with flour. The measurements are generous but workable; the main gaps are vinegar strength, salt type, and how the finished jars are meant to be kept.
- Scale and yieldThis is a farm-sized batch: well over ten pounds of prepared vegetables, enough to fill a good many pint jars. Halving everything works cleanly if you want a manageable quantity.
- The mustard"One-half pound mustard" means dry ground mustard powder, not prepared table mustard — somewhere between 1½ and 2 cups by volume. Ground mustard loses pungency with age, so a fresh tin matters here.
- Turmeric"Tumeric" is a common period spelling. Half an ounce of ground turmeric is roughly 1½ to 2 tablespoons; it is doing colour work more than flavour work, and it will stain wooden spoons and porous surfaces stubbornly.
- Vinegar strengthNineteenth-century household vinegar varied widely. Use commercial cider or white vinegar at 5 percent acidity, which is the standard modern bottling and the strength every current pickling guideline assumes.
- The saltOne pound of salt to four quarts of water is about a 10 percent brine — quite strong, and correct for an overnight draw. Use pickling or kosher salt; iodized table salt will cloud the brine and darken the vegetables.
- The scald is deliberate"Soon as they begin to boil remove from fire" is the hinge. The vegetables are heated through and no further — cauliflower and cucumber held at a boil for even a few minutes go limp, and the whole point of the dish is crunch.
- Slaking the flourMixing the flour, mustard and turmeric with cold vinegar before adding them to the boiling vinegar prevents lumps. The two-minute boil is short; expect a sauce that thickens further as it cools, and stir it while it does so it does not skin over.
- PansUse stainless steel, enamel or glass throughout. Hot vinegar in aluminium, copper or cast iron will pick up metallic flavour and dull the turmeric colour.
- Storage"When cold put in jars" describes a crock-style pickle meant to be eaten through the winter from a cool cellar. Without a cellar, keep the jars in the refrigerator and use them within a couple of months; if you want shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested boiling-water-bath procedure for mustard pickles rather than this instruction.
Mustard pickles of this kind descend from English piccalilli, itself generally traced to eighteenth-century attempts at imitating Indian pickles — hence the turmeric, which came with the colonial spice trade and stayed for its colour. In the American Northeast the formula became a common autumn standby: cauliflower, small cucumbers, pearl onions, celery, peppers and, above all, the green tomatoes that would never ripen once the nights turned. The flour thickener marks it as the sauce-bound style, as distinct from clear brined pickles.