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Pickled Onions (Like all other pickles)
Onions, like all other pickles, are considered more wholesome, though less handsome, when prepared at home, then when bought at the warehouses. Home-made pickled onions are besides quite as expensive. The small silver onions are generally used for pickling, and should be obtained as soon as possible after they are harvested, as they are then in the best condition. This will be about the middle of August. Peel the onions until they look clear, being careful not to cut the bulb. If a little warm water be poured over them the task will not be quite so disagreeable. Throw them as they are peeled into a bowl of white-wine vinegar, and when they are all finished strain the vinegar into an enameled stewpan, with 1 ounce of whole peppercorns, 1 dessertspoonful of salt, and an inch of whole ginger to each quart. Boil gently for five minutes, let the liquid cool, and pour it over the onions. It must be boiled again twice before the onions are fastened up, and should be sufficient to cover them entirely. Put the pickle into jars, cork securely, and cover them with bladder, then store for use. Instead of boiling the vinegar three times, the onions may be thrown into it when boiling, and simmered gently for two minutes. Onions and cucumbers are frequently pickled together.
A straightforward cold-pack vinegar pickle from the late-Victorian household tradition. The method is sound, but several of the measures and the sealing instructions need translating before you start.
- The onions"Small silver onions" are the small white pickling onions sold today as pearl or silverskin onions, roughly 3/4 to 1 inch across. Cipollini work but are flatter and softer. The instruction not to cut the bulb matters: nick the root plate and the layers loosen and go slack in the jar.
- PeelingPour boiling or very hot water over them, leave a minute, then drain and slip the skins off; the recipe's warm water is the same trick at lower strength. Trim the root end as shallowly as possible.
- Vinegar strengthUse a white wine vinegar labelled at 5 percent acidity, and do not dilute it. Acidity is what preserves the onions, and period vinegars varied enough that the original gives no guidance on it.
- MeasuresA dessertspoonful is 2 teaspoons. An ounce of whole peppercorns per quart is about 4 tablespoons, which is a great deal of pepper by modern taste; half that still gives a well-spiced pickle. "An inch of whole ginger" most likely means a piece of dried ginger root, which was what was commonly sold whole for pickling, though the recipe does not say so; dried is drier and sharper than fresh.
- The panAn enamelled stewpan is specified because vinegar attacks bare iron, copper and aluminium. Use stainless steel or enamelled cast iron; anything reactive will turn the pickle grey and metallic.
- Boiling the vinegarThe recipe gives no reason for the three coolings and reboilings; repeated hot vinegar poured over raw onions extracts more from the whole spices without cooking the onions soft. The alternative given at the end, a two-minute simmer of the onions themselves, gives a slightly softer onion and a faster result.
- Sealing and storageCork and bladder are obsolete and do not give a reliable seal. Pack into clean jars with modern two-piece lids, make sure the onions are fully submerged, and keep them refrigerated rather than treating them as shelf-stable; for a cupboard-stable pickle, follow a current tested water-bath processing schedule.
- Yield and timingThe recipe gives no quantities for the onions themselves. As a rough guide, two pounds of peeled pickling onions will fill about one and a half quart jars and take somewhere under a quart of vinegar. Pickled onions are usually left several weeks before eating and are generally said to improve over a couple of months, though the recipe says nothing about this.