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Vinegar, Pickles, and Pickling: Pickled
Pickled Cabbage. -Select firm, ripe heads of either white or red cabbage, or mix the two. Quarter them, remove the outside leaves, and let them dry. Shred them as for cold slaw and lay them down in a suitable jar between layers of salt. Cover with strong spiced pickling liquid and seal.
Or shred the cabbage, place it in a preserving kettle or suitable jars, and cover with boiling water. Let stand until cold. Drain. Add mixed spices and cover with cold vinegar, or cover with spiced pickling liquid.
Or boil the cabbage in salted water VINEGAR, PICKLES, AND PICKLING until it is tender. The pickling liquid pickling may be poured on cold or scalding hot. In the latter case let stand until perfectly cold. Seal air tight and store in a cool, dry place.
Or if the jars are not air tight, after a few days open them, fill up with vinegar and again seal.
Pickled Cauliflower. -Cut the cauliflowers on a dry, hot day, after the dew has evaporated and before they are fully blown. Slice ard sprinkle them with salt, and let stand for two or three days.
Or boil in salt and water until they are tender. Drain off the water or juices, spread upon a dry cloth, covering with another cloth, and let stand in a warm place for twentyfour hours. Pack in jars, cover with cold spiced pickling liquid and seal.
Or place the cauliflowers in cold salt and water at the rate of 4 ounces of salt to 1 quart of water, and bring to a boil over a slow fire. Remove immediately and cover with cold spiced vinegar.
Pickled Green Corn.-Pull the ears of corn when slightly overripe but not too hard. Take off the outer husks, leaving the corn well covered with the inner husks, and tie the latter tightly at the top end. Pack the ears of corn thus prepared in a clean firkin or cask and cover with strong brine. When wanted for use soak in fresh water twelve hours or more, changing the water occasionally. the brine every two or three days.
Pour them out in a sieve or into a cloth strainer to dry and let them stand a day or two or until they turn black. Pack them in bottles or jars and pour over them spiced pickling liquid scalding hot. Let stand until cold and seal, Or if they are not to be sealed air tight, pour off the pickle each day for three or four days, bring it to a boil, take off the scum and pour over the walnuts scalding hot.
Or instead of steeping in cold brine, place the walnuts in a strong brine and simmer for an hour or two. Expose in a sieve or cloth strainer twenty-four hours or more, or until they turn black. Pack and cover with scalding hot spiced pickling liquid.
Two to six months will be required before they are fit to eat. During this time they must be kept covered from the air either by sealing the jars or keeping them covered with vinegar.
These are four preserving methods run together, and the printing is damaged: the green corn entry breaks off mid-instruction and the passage that follows belongs to a pickled walnut recipe whose opening lines are missing. Read the notes below before treating any of it as a working procedure.
- Why this cannot be followedMost versions here end with sealing and storing, with no heat processing of the filled jar and no stated acidity. Cabbage, cauliflower and sweet corn are all low-acid vegetables; sealed cold in a container of unknown pH they create exactly the oxygen-free environment in which Clostridium botulinum produces toxin. Use a current tested pickle recipe instead.
- "Strong spiced pickling liquid"The strength is never given, and neither is the vinegar's acidity. Modern safe pickling depends on vinegar of at least 5 percent acetic acid used in a measured ratio to the vegetables; a phrase like "cover with cold vinegar" cannot be checked or reproduced.
- Salt brine as the only barrierOnly one brine in the whole passage is quantified, the 4 ounces of salt to 1 quart of water for cauliflower, and that is a blanching brine, not a curing one. The "strong brine" for the corn and the walnuts is undefined, so there is no way to know whether it would ever have reached a preserving concentration.
- Ears of corn in a firkinA firkin is a small wooden cask, conventionally a quarter-barrel of about nine gallons, though in American household use the term covered tubs of varying size. Whole ears held in their husks under an unmeasured brine, then desalted in repeatedly changed water, has no modern equivalent and no measurable control point.
- "If the jars are not air tight"The instruction to open the jars after a few days, top up with vinegar and reseal, or to pour off, boil and return the pickle daily, tells you these were crocks and lidded jars rather than sealed, processed glass. The whole method assumes repeated handling and frequent inspection by the cook.
- Terms that have shifted"Shred as for cold slaw" means cut fine for coleslaw. Cauliflower "before they are fully blown" means before the curd loosens and separates. The two to six months given for the walnuts is a ripening period, not a safety margin.
- Green walnutsThe final paragraph belongs to pickled green walnuts, picked young enough that a needle passes through the shell. They stain hands and cloth heavily and blacken on exposure to air, which is the "until they turn black" the text refers to.
Household Discoveries belongs to a genre of early twentieth-century American compendia that treated the kitchen as one department of a managed household, alongside laundry, cleaning and small repairs, and its pickling chapter reads accordingly: not individual recipes so much as a survey of every method a housekeeper might have heard of, strung together with "or." That structure reflects how pickling actually worked before reliable canning jars and tested processing times were widespread. A cook chose between salting down, brining in a cask, scalding with hot spiced vinegar or covering cold, according to what she had and how long the food had to keep, and she expected to open the crock periodically, skim it, and top it up. Pickled red cabbage and pickled green walnuts both come into American books from English practice, where walnut pickle and walnut ketchup were long-standing uses for fruit thinned from the tree in midsummer. The absence of measurements is not carelessness on the author's part; standardized vinegar strengths and the science linking anaerobic low-acid preserves to botulism were still being worked out, and government canning guidance of the sort we now rely on did not yet exist.