Apple Pickle
3 pounds apples. 2 pounds sugar. 1 pint vinegar. 1 teaspoonful mace. 1 tablespoonful beaten cinnamon. 1 dozen cloves. 2 teaspoonfuls allspice. 1 tablespoonful celery-seed.
Boil until the apples are perfectly clear.--Mrs. J. A. S.
A sweet spiced pickle of the kind that sat beside cold ham and roast pork on a Virginia table. The method is a single line, so most of the work is in reading what it leaves out.
- Proportions and yieldThree pounds of apples, two pounds (about 4 1/2 cups) of sugar and a pint (2 cups) of vinegar. Expect a yield in the region of three pints, though the recipe does not say. Cider vinegar was the usual household vinegar of the period and suits the fruit better than distilled white.
- Which applesChoose a firm, tart cooking apple that holds its shape -- Granny Smith, Winesap, Northern Spy. Softer modern dessert apples collapse into sauce long before they turn clear.
- Peel, core, quarterThe recipe assumes you know this. Sweet pickles of this kind were commonly made from peeled quarters or thick wedges; where whole small apples were used, receipts often direct that they be pricked all over first so the syrup could enter.
- "Beaten cinnamon"Beaten means pounded in a mortar, that is, ground. A tablespoon of ground cinnamon plus a teaspoon of ground mace will cloud the syrup badly; tie the mace, cloves, allspice and celery seed in a spice bag and use a broken cinnamon stick or two instead if you want a clear pickle.
- Celery seedNot a misprint; savory seeds do turn up in fruit pickles of this era and keep the sugar from reading as dessert. It is potent -- a level tablespoon is the ceiling, not a starting point.
- "Until perfectly clear"This is the hinge. The apples are done when the flesh loses its opacity and goes translucent all the way through, which happens as syrup replaces the water in the fruit. Expect 30 to 45 minutes at a bare simmer; a hard boil breaks the pieces before they clear.
- If the syrup thinsLift the fruit out with a slotted spoon once it is clear, boil the syrup down until it coats a spoon, then pour it back over. Cooking the apples longer to thicken the syrup only turns them to pulp.
- Keeping itThe original gives no processing instructions because it assumed a cold cellar and quick use. Pack into clean jars, cool and refrigerate, where it keeps for several weeks and improves after the first. For shelf storage, follow a current tested boiling-water-bath procedure rather than this text.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by some 250 Virginia housewives, is a book of attributions -- receipt after receipt carries a contributor's name or initials, as this one carries Mrs. J. A. S. Sweet pickles like this one belong to a large family of Anglo-American fruit preserves in which sugar and vinegar do the keeping together: peaches, pears, watermelon rind, damsons and crab apples all got similar treatment with much the same spices. The purpose was practical as much as culinary. A Virginia household put up apples in quantity in autumn, and the sharp, sugary pickle was a foil to the salt-cured hams and heavy roasts of winter eating. The terse instruction -- one line for the whole method -- is characteristic of the period: these books were written cook to cook, and no one who owned a preserving kettle needed to be told to peel the fruit.