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Vinegar, Pickles, and Pickling: Walnuts
To Pickle White Walnuts. - Pick small green walnuts as above and pare them very thin, or until the whites appear. Place in cold brine strong enough to bear up an egg and simmer for five or ten minutes, but do not let them come to a boil. Drain and cover them with cold brine for twenty-four hours or more. Pour out in a sieve or cloth strainer, cover them with a cloth, dry them carefully between clean, soft pieces of cloth and pack them down with blades of mace, nutmeg, and horse-radish. Cover with cold or hot vinegar and when cold seal tightly to exclude the air.
Pickled Lemons. Test them by Pickled Walnuts. -Pick small green walnuts about the first week in July or before the middle of the month, after which they are likely to become hard and woody. Test them by thrusting a strong pin through them, and discard all that are too old and hard. Scald them slightly in boiling water. Rub off the outer skin between cloths (or this may be omitted if preferred), and put them into cold brine strong enough to bear up an egg. Thrusting a pin through them also allows the pickle to penetrate more thoroughly and quickly than would otherwise be the case. Let them stand a week or two, changing - .
Slice dozen lemons, sprinkle them with salt, lay ther down in a large glass jar and sprinkle among them 2 ounces of spice, 2 ounces of white pepper, ounce of mace, 1 ounce of cloves, all bruised together in a mortar with ounce of Cayenne, 2 ounces of horseradish, 2 ounces of mustard seed. Pour over them 2 quarts of vinegar scalding hot. This pickle is for immediate use, and will be ready in three days to a week. Red peppers, paprika, or garlic and shallots may be added if desired.
Or cut dozen lemons into six or eight pieces, cover with the mixed spices, as in the first recipe, place in a preserving kettle, cover with 2 quarts of vinegar and boil a quarter of an hour.
Or pack the lemons in a jar, set the jar in boiling water and boil for fifteen or twenty minutes. Let the jar stand in a warm place stirring daily for several weeks. Finally, bring to a boil, pack in small jars or bottles and seal.
Or to pickle whole lemons, select small fruit and slit the rinds as if to take off the peel in quarters, but do not cut through the pulp. Cover the lemons with salt, and pack it down hard to fill these slits. Pack them on end in a dripping pan three or four days, or until the salt melts, and let them stand, turning them end for end in the liquor two or three times a day until the rinds are tender. To this liquor add sufficient spiced vinegar to cover the lemons. Pack them in jars with mustard seed and garlic.
Cover with any prepared pickling liquid and seal.
Or pare a dozen lemons very thin, taking off so little of the outer portion of the rind that the white will not be seen. Cut a gash in each end and rub them thoroughly with salt, rubbing it into the gashes. Cover with salt and let stand for three or four days. As the salt dissolves rub more into them and especially fill the gashes at the end. Now cover with dry salt, place them in a very slow oven with a dozen cloves of garlic and half a teacupful of scraped horseradish, and let them dry, taking care that they are not burned, or even browned. They should be thoroughly dried out-as dry as paper. pour over them a gallon of spiced pickling liquid cold. Place the whole in a suitable jar, and let stand in a warm place for two or three weeks, stirring or shaking frequently. Shake well and strain off a little of the liquid from time to time for table use Now in soups and sauces. Shred the lemons fine when required for made dishes, soups, sauces, etc.
Pickled Peaches. - Look over the peaches carefully, selecting the ripe fruit and discarding all that are soft or specked. Rub clean with a soft, dry cloth and stick into each large peach 4 or 5 cloves without the heads, and into each small one 2 or 3 cloves.
Place in a preserving kettle 1 gallon of vinegar. Stir in 6 pounds of brown sugar and bring to a boil, removing the scum as fast as it appears. Pack the peaches in suitable bottles or jars. Pour the boiling sirup over them scalding hot and cover tightly.
Let stand overnight, pour off the sirup once more, bring to a boil and again pour over the peaches. Do this for three or four days. Finally, pack in cans or bottles and seal while hot.
Or for sweet-pickled peaches, allow pound of sugar by weight to each pound of fruit. Put the sugar and peaches in layers in a preserving kettle and bring to a boil. Add for each 6 pounds of fruit a pint of vinegar and in the vinegar place a thin muslin bag containing a tablespoonful each of cinnamon, cloves, and mace.
Pour the spiced vinegar into the peaches and sirup with the bag of spices, and boil for not more than five minutes. Take out the peaches with a skimmer, lay them on blotters to cool and continue boiling the sirup until it thickens. Pack the peaches in jars, fill to overflowing with boiling sirup, and seal at once. Or for sour pickled peaches, select full-grown peaches before they are ripe. Salt them in strong brine for a week or two, change the brine every two or three days, dry them on a cloth strainer, wipe them with a cloth and cover with hot, spiced, pickling liquid containing garlic, mustard, ginger, cloves, and the like. Seal and store for four or five months before bringing them to the table.
Pickled Pears. -The above recipes for pickled peaches may also be applied to pickled pears. Or pack in a preserving kettle in VINEGAR, PICKLES, AND PICKLING alternate layers 10 pounds of ripe pears and 3 pounds of coffee sugar.
Pour over them 1 quart of vinegar containing, in a thin muslin bag, 1 ounce of cinnamon, 1 ounce of cloves, ¼ ounce of mace. Slice and stir in 4 ounces of citron and boil until the pears are tender. Take out the pears with a skimmer, boil the sirup half an hour or more until it is thick. Fill the jars or cans to overflowing and seal at once.
Or prepare a sirup of 1½ pints of vinegar and 3 pounds of fine sugar.
Bring this to a boil. Place in a preserving kettle a peck of ripe fruit, peeled and cored, pour the sirup over it and boil until the fruit is tender, but not soft. Remove the fruit with the skimmer and pack it in jars.
Preserve the sirup, which may be used again, and prepare a fresh sirup of 1½ pints of vinegar and 2 pounds of coffee sugar. Place in this sirup a thin muslin bag containing an ounce each of any kind of mixed spices preferred. Bring to a boil, fill the jars to overflowing, and seal.
Pickled Cherries. - Fill a widemouthed glass bottle or jar with nice firm and medium ripe cherries. Add 2 tablespoonfuls of salt, and fill the jars with cold vinegar. Seal and let stand six or eight weeks before using.
Pickled Peppers. --Soak fresh bell peppers, either green or red, in strong brine for a week or two, changing every two or three days. Pack in suitable jars and cover with cold vinegar. The seeds tend to make the peppers very strong, and may be removed if less strength is desired. A few peppers added to pickled cucumbers improves them very much, as the heat of the peppers is taken out by the vinegar and becomes blended with the cucumbers, giving them an agreeable flavor.
Pickled Beets. - Select small red beets having the roots on and wash them carefully so as not to break the roots or the skin. Place in a large kettle, cover with plenty of water and boil three or four hours. Take them up carefully with a skimmer so as not to break the skins. Place them on a cloth strainer to cool and dry. When cold, quarter them or pack them in suitable jars, cover with pure or pickled cold vinegar, and seal so as to exclude the air. If not sealed it will be necessary to pour off the vinegar occasionally, bring it to a boil and pour it scalding hot over the beets.
Or after the beets have been boiled, pack them in jars and cover with hot brine strong enough to float an egg.
These pickling directions belong to an era before anyone measured the acidity of vinegar or the temperature inside a sealed jar. Several of them describe preserving procedures that no current food-safety authority would accept, so the notes below explain the terms and then explain the problems.
- Sealing without processingAlmost every entry here ends with "pack in jars and seal" or "seal at once" with no boiling-water processing and no headspace given. Nothing in the sequence guarantees that the jar contents reach and hold a temperature that destroys spoilage organisms, and a tightly sealed, unprocessed jar held at room temperature is exactly the anaerobic environment botulinum spores tolerate.
- Vinegar of unknown strengthPreservation by pickling depends on the finished product holding a pH at or below 4.6, which in practice means starting with vinegar of a known 5 percent acidity and not diluting it with brine or fruit juice beyond a tested ratio. Period vinegar was frequently home-made or barrel-drawn and varied widely, and none of these recipes states a strength or a fruit-to-vinegar proportion that can be checked.
- The beets are the worst caseBeets are a low-acid vegetable. Boiling them for three or four hours, covering them with cold vinegar and sealing to exclude air produces a sealed low-acid jar whose final acidity is unknown, and the alternative given here, covering hot beets with strong brine instead of vinegar, removes the acid altogether.
- Cold-packed cherriesWhole cherries covered with cold vinegar, sealed and left six to eight weeks at room temperature rely entirely on acid diffusing through intact skins. The interior of the fruit acidifies slowly and unevenly, which is why modern cherry pickles are either processed or kept refrigerated and eaten quickly.
- Weeks in a warm placeTwo of the lemon methods call for the jar to stand in a warm place for several weeks, stirring or shaking. Warm holding of a salted, spiced, partially acidified mixture is a fermentation, and fermentations need a measured salt concentration and a monitored pH to go the way they are supposed to.
- "Brine strong enough to bear up an egg"The floating-egg test indicates roughly a 10 percent salt solution by weight, which is a curing brine rather than a preserving one. It slows spoilage while the walnuts or peaches are held for a week or two, but the recipe treats it as a safeguard for the finished pickle, which it is not.
- Vanished units and termsCoffee sugar was a coarse granulated sugar, interchangeable with ordinary granulated. Blades of mace are the whole strips of nutmeg aril, not the ground powder. Citron here is most likely candied citron peel, though preserved citron melon is also possible. A peck is eight dry quarts, roughly 12 to 14 pounds of pears.
- Green walnuts themselvesThe July timing and the pin test are sound: the walnut is picked before the inner shell lignifies, and a pin that meets resistance means the shell has begun to harden. The green husks stain skin and cloth a deep brown that does not wash out, so gloves are worth the trouble. Use a current tested recipe if you want to pickle them.
Pickled green walnuts are an English preserve of long standing, made in the narrow window in early summer when the nut is still soft enough to pierce, and eaten with cold beef, cheese and game; the same immature nuts went into walnut ketchup, one of the ancestors of bottled brown sauce.