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Stuffed Peppers
Cut the tops from large peppers and remove the seeds, being careful not to break the peppers; make a brine in the proportion of two cups of salt to a gallon of water, and soak the peppers twentyfour hours. Shave cabbage fine, one head for every four peppers; sprinkle the cabbage with salt, add some water and let stand for twenty-four hours; then drain the peppers and press the water from the cabbage. Mix with the cabbage an ounce of celery seed and half a cup of white mustard seed for every twenty-four peppers; pack the peppers with this mixture, adding a little mixed spice as each pepper is packed; sew on the tops with fine cord; pack the peppers into a jar. Bring to a boil enough vinegar to cover them, adding a few whole cloves and half a pound of brown sugar; throw this over the peppers boiling hot. They will be ready to slice and serve in about two weeks.
— Mrs. Caroline A. Day
This is a stuffed pickle, not a dinner dish — sweet peppers packed with salted cabbage, mustard and celery seed, then flooded with hot spiced vinegar and left to cure. The original assumes a stoneware crock in a cool cellar, which is the part that needs rethinking.
- Storage is the hingeNothing here is heat-processed, and the vinegar is only "enough to cover," so the finished acidity is unknown. Keep the jar in the refrigerator for the two-week cure and thereafter, and eat within a couple of months; do not store it at room temperature. For shelf-stable sealed jars, use a current tested pickle recipe with measured vinegar.
- Vinegar strengthUse commercial vinegar labeled 5% acidity. Nineteenth-century household cider vinegar varied in strength, and receipts of this kind rarely specify it.
- The peppers"Large peppers" means sweet bell types — in this period often called mangoes. Choose thick-walled, squarish peppers that will stand upright in the jar.
- Brine proportionsTwo cups of salt to a gallon of water is a heavy brine, on the order of 12 to 15 percent by weight depending on the coarseness of the salt; use plain pickling or kosher salt, since iodized salt can cloud the liquid. The 24-hour soak firms the pepper walls and draws out water.
- Cabbage ratioOne head per four peppers sounds extravagant, but salted and pressed cabbage loses most of its bulk. A medium head yields perhaps 3 cups of drained shreds — enough to fill four or five bells snugly.
- Seed measuresAn ounce of celery seed is roughly 4 tablespoons; half a cup of white mustard seed means yellow mustard seed, the common pale variety. Both amounts are for 24 peppers — scale down hard for a batch of four or six.
- "A little mixed spice"This means pickling spice: mustard, allspice, coriander, bay, cloves, a little dried chili. A pinch per pepper is enough, and whole spices keep the brine clearer than ground.
- Sewing the topsPlain cotton butcher's twine and a large needle work; two or three stitches per pepper. Wooden toothpicks pushed through the lid and shoulder are a reasonable substitute and easier to remove at the table.
- ServingThe recipe says only that they are ready to "slice and serve"; slicing crosswise into rings shows the cabbage filling in each round, and pickles of this kind were commonly eaten as a relish with cold meat. Twenty-four peppers is a large batch; four to six makes a manageable jar.
Stuffed pickled peppers of this kind were widely known in nineteenth-century America as "mangoes" — a name generally traced to the mango pickles brought back from India by British traders, which colonial and early American cooks imitated using whatever hollow vegetable was at hand: muskmelons, cucumbers, and eventually sweet peppers. The method here is pure kitchen-garden economy: salt to draw water out of both pepper and cabbage so the vegetables stay crisp, mustard and celery seed for bite, brown sugar and cloves to turn a sharp vinegar into a sweet pickle.