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Pickled Cucumbers
If the cucumbers are very young and small they may be pickled whole; if not, they are better cut into thick slices. Sprinkle salt rather plentifully over them, and let them remain twenty-four hours. Drain them from the juice, dry them in cloth, and pour over them boiling vinegar, with 1/2 an ounce of mustard seed, 1 ounce of salt, 1 ounce of long pepper, half a bruised nutmeg, and a pinch of cayenne to every quart of vinegar. Cover them closely, and let them remain until next day, when the vinegar must again be boiled and poured over the cucumbers, and this process repeated each day for four days. They should then be covered closely, and care should be taken with these, as with all pickles, that they are thoroughly covered with vinegar. It is best to pickle cucumbers by themselves, as they are apt to become mouldy. If any sign of this appears (and they should be looked at every three or four weeks to ascertain it, and on this account should be kept in a wide-mouthed glass bottle instead of an earthen jar), put them into a fresh dry bottle, boil the vinegar up again, and pour it over them. Time to pickle, one week.
A four-day repeat-scald pickle of the English type, written before sealed jars and standard vinegar strengths. The salting and the daily boiling vinegar are what make it work; skip either and the cucumbers go soft and cloudy.
- Vinegar strength is the hingeThe recipe does not say what vinegar to use, and strength varied enormously in period. Use a vinegar labelled 5 per cent acidity and do not dilute it, since the acid is the only thing preserving the jar.
- Treat it as a refrigerator pickleNothing here is heat-processed or sealed, which is why the original expects mould and tells you to inspect every three or four weeks. Keep the finished jar in the refrigerator and eat within a couple of months rather than storing it in a cupboard.
- Long pepperPiper longum, a hotter, sweeter relative of black pepper sold in small catkin-like spikes. Indian and specialist spice merchants stock it; an ounce is a generous handful. Black peppercorns are the usual substitute, though the flavour is flatter.
- Weights per quartThe spicing is by weight to a quart of vinegar: half an ounce of mustard seed is about a tablespoon, an ounce of salt about two tablespoons, an ounce of long pepper a loose half-cup or so of the dried spikes.
- The salting stage"Rather plentifully" means enough to draw water freely, roughly 2 tablespoons of coarse salt per pound of cucumbers. Twenty-four hours is the full time; drain and pat genuinely dry, as trapped brine dilutes the vinegar.
- Cucumbers to usePickling varieties such as Kirby, unwaxed and firm. Supermarket slicing cucumbers have thick waxed skins and watery flesh and will collapse over four days of hot vinegar.
- The four-day cycleEach day the vinegar is poured off, brought back to a boil, and returned hot to the cucumbers. Use a non-reactive pan, and keep the cucumbers covered between pours.
- Jar and coverageA wide-mouthed glass jar, as specified, lets you see and reach the contents. Anything standing proud of the vinegar will spoil first, so weight the cucumbers down or top up with fresh boiled vinegar.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity of cucumbers. As a rough guide, a quart of spiced vinegar will cover something in the region of 2 lb of sliced cucumbers.
Repeat-scalding is characteristic of nineteenth-century English pickling: rather than cook the vegetable, which softens it, the cook poured boiling vinegar over it day after day so the acid penetrated while the flesh stayed crisp. The candid warning about mould is worth noting: before reliably sealed jars, pickles were living, watched things, and the instruction to keep them in clear glass so they could be inspected was practical advice rather than presentation.