Pickled Figs
Pick figs which are barely ripe, though fully swollen out, and leave stems on the fruit. Place in a jar of fairly strong brine and let stand over night when rinse well in fresh cold water, drain, pack close together in jars, and pour over them hot spiced vinegar (sweetened if liked) as for apples, cherries, grapes, etc.
This is a shelf-stable pickle set down without a single measurement, and figs are the one fruit where that matters most. The notes below explain why it should be read rather than followed.
- Figs are not an acid fruitFresh figs sit around pH 4.6 to 5.6, on the borderline or above it, unlike the apples, cherries and grapes the recipe casually groups them with. Sealed in a jar without reliably measured acid, they are a recognised botulism risk, and current preserving guidance treats figs as a fruit that must be deliberately acidified.
- "Fairly strong brine" is not a quantitySalt concentration here does the work of firming the fruit and suppressing spoilage overnight, and the recipe gives no ratio at all. Anything from a light 5 percent solution to a saturated one would answer the description, with entirely different results.
- "Hot spiced vinegar" of unknown strengthHousehold vinegar of this period varied widely in acetic acid content, and some of it was homemade. Modern preserving relies on vinegar of a stated 5 percent acidity, in a stated proportion to the fruit, and this recipe supplies neither.
- No heat processingThe jars are packed and filled with hot vinegar and then, apparently, left. There is no boiling-water bath, no processing time and no seal test, so nothing here establishes that the contents are safe to keep at room temperature.
- The rinse undoes part of the protectionRinsing the brined figs in fresh cold water removes surface salt, which is fine for flavour but means the preservation rests entirely on the vinegar, whose strength is unspecified. The two steps together leave no measurable barrier to spoilage organisms.
- "As for apples, cherries, grapes"The recipe appears to lean on a pickling method described elsewhere rather than giving one here. Taken alone it is a sketch, not a set of instructions.
- If you want pickled figsUse a current tested recipe from a food-preservation authority, which will specify vinegar acidity, sugar, headspace and processing time for the jar size.
Pickled and spiced figs belong to a long line of sweet-sour fruit preserves meant for the cold-meat table, where a sharp, spiced fruit stood in for the fresh vegetables of summer. The instruction to pick fruit "barely ripe, though fully swollen out" and to leave the stems on is the practical heart of the entry: a fully ripe fig collapses in vinegar, and the stem gives something to lift the fruit by and helps the skin stay whole. Figs were largely a Southern and Gulf Coast crop in the United States, prolific and highly perishable, and preserving books often return to them with preserves, brandied figs and pickles because a laden tree produced far more than a household could eat fresh. The overnight brining step is the same one long used in cucumber pickling, where it draws out water and firms the flesh.