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Cucumber Mangoes
Choose large, green cucumbers, not very ripe, cut a long narrow strip out of the sides, and scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon. Pound a few of these with a little scraped horseradish, finely shred garlic, mustard seed, and white pepper; stuff the hollows out of which the seeds came as full as they will hold, replace the strips, and bind them in their places with a little thread. Boil as much vinegar as will cover them, and pour it on them while hot; repeat this for three days. The last time boil the vinegar with half an ounce of mace, half an ounce of cloves, 2 ounces of pepper, 2 ounces of mustard seed, a stick of horseradish, and 1 clove of garlic to every half gallon of vinegar. Put the cucumbers into jars, pour the boiling liquid over them, tie the jars closely down, and set them aside for use. Time, four days.
A stuffed pickle in the eighteenth-century English manner, built on repeated pourings of hot spiced vinegar rather than any sealing or processing. The four days of scalding are the method, not a delay.
- The hinge: repeat the hot pourDraining off the vinegar, reboiling it and pouring it back for three days is what drives acid and spice into a thick-walled cucumber without cooking it to mush. Skipping to a single pour gives a pickle that is sour outside and bland and watery at the centre.
- Choose the right cucumberFirm, thick-walled cucumbers large enough to hollow and stuff, as the recipe specifies, with no wax coating. Supermarket slicing cucumbers and shrink-wrapped English cucumbers are too soft and too watery to hold a stuffing.
- Vinegar strengthUse a vinegar labelled 5 percent acidity — cider or distilled white. Vinegar strength was less consistent before modern standardisation, and some vinegars sold today (rice and certain specialty bottlings) run nearer 4 percent, which is not enough acid for a pickle held any length of time. Check the label.
- Spice quantities are by weightHalf an ounce of mace is roughly 4 tablespoons of blade mace; half an ounce of cloves about 2 tablespoons; 2 ounces of peppercorns about 1/2 cup; 2 ounces of mustard seed about 1/3 cup. A half gallon is 8 cups. Tie the spices in muslin if you want a clear brine.
- Binding the stripsCotton kitchen twine, wound twice around the cucumber and knotted. Avoid synthetic thread, which will not take the boiling vinegar kindly, and remove the twine before serving.
- "Tie the jars closely down"The original means a cloth or bladder cover, not a vacuum seal, and assumed a cold larder. Treat these as refrigerator pickles: clean jars, brine covering the cucumbers completely, lids on, cold storage, and eat within a couple of months. They are not shelf-stable by current canning standards.
- Garlic and horseradishA "stick" of horseradish is presumably a peeled length of fresh root, four or five inches being a workable reading. Garlic and horseradish do lose pungency in repeated hot vinegar, and the recipe calls for fresh amounts again in the final boiling.
- Yield and servingServing -- The recipe fixes no yield: boil as much vinegar as will cover whatever you have stuffed, and scale the spices at the stated rate per half gallon. Serve sliced crosswise into rounds, so each slice shows the stuffing, alongside cold meat or cheese.