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Pickled Jerusalem Artichokes
Boil the artichokes as directed in preceding recipe, drain and place them in a stone jar. To each quart of artichokes allow one pint of cider vinegar, one bay leaf, one slice of onion, four whole cloves and a blade of mace. Put the vinegar in a porcelain-lined kettle, add all the other ingredients, stand over a moderate fire, and bring slowly to boiling point, then pour this over the artichokes and stand away to cool.
They will be ready for use in twenty-four hours, and will keep nicely for two weeks.
A quick vinegar pickle rather than a canned preserve — the original is honest about it keeping only two weeks, and that is the figure to respect.
- What the vegetable isJerusalem artichokes are sunchokes, the knobbly tubers of Helianthus tuberosus, not globe artichokes. Scrub them well; peeling is optional but the skins darken in vinegar, so many cooks pare them.
- The preceding recipeThe preceding recipe is not reproduced here; boiling for a pickle of this kind means salted water until the tubers just yield to a knife tip, roughly 12 to 20 minutes depending on size. Stop while they still have some resistance — sunchokes go from firm to mealy quickly, and the vinegar will not firm them up again.
- Non-reactive pans and jars"Porcelain-lined kettle" means an enamelled or otherwise non-reactive pan; stainless steel is the modern equivalent. Bare aluminium, cast iron or copper will react with the hot vinegar and taint the flavour. A "stone jar" is glazed stoneware; a glass jar does the same job.
- Measuring by volumeA quart of prepared artichokes is roughly 1.25 to 1.5 lb of tubers, and takes one pint (2 cups) of vinegar. Most cider vinegar sold today runs around 5 percent acidity; use it undiluted, as the recipe directs.
- A blade of maceMace is the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed; a "blade" is one dried piece, roughly half to one teaspoon crumbled. Ground mace works but clouds the brine, so tie it in a scrap of muslin with the cloves if you use it.
- Heat and holding"A moderate fire" here just means bringing the spiced vinegar slowly to a boil so the aromatics infuse rather than a hard rolling boil. Pour it over hot, cool uncovered, then refrigerate — this is a fresh-pack pickle with no canning step, and two weeks in the cold is the outer limit.
- Yield and servingA quart of artichokes with a pint of vinegar poured over needs more than a quart of jar space — allow roughly three pints of capacity. It serves as a relish beside cold meat, chicken salad or a cheese plate. The texture is deliberately crunchy, closer to a pickled water chestnut than to a cucumber pickle.
- One digestive noteSunchokes store their carbohydrate as inulin, which many people do not digest comfortably in quantity. Serve modest portions the first time.
Jerusalem artichokes are native to North America and have nothing to do with Jerusalem; the name is usually traced to a corruption of the Italian girasole, sunflower, though that derivation is traditional rather than documented. The plant is a close relation of the annual sunflower. European gardeners took the tuber up in the early seventeenth century, and by the late nineteenth it had settled into American cookbooks in a narrow set of roles — boiled and buttered, in a cream sauce, or pickled, as here. The two-week keeping limit marks this as a quick larder pickle, meant to be eaten up rather than stored through the winter.