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Cucumbers or Other Small Pickles
2 gallons vinegar. 3 tablespoonfuls ginger. 2 tablespoonfuls celery-seed. 1 tablespoonful cinnamon. 2 tablespoonfuls turmeric. 1 tablespoonful horseradish. 1 tablespoonful garlic. 2 tablespoonfuls pepper. 1 teaspoonful cloves. 1 teaspoonful of mace. 1 teaspoonful of allspice; all the spices must be pulverized.
Add the garlic and horseradish when cold. Add two pounds sugar, which must be boiled in the vinegar and poured over the spices. One teaspoonful red pepper will improve it. Boil the vegetables in plain vinegar before putting in the spiced vinegar.
Gherkins and snaps are made in the same way as cucumbers.--Mrs. S.
This is a spiced sweet-sour vinegar for cucumbers, gherkins or snap beans rather than a fixed formula, and it is scaled for a nineteenth-century pickle crock. Read it as a ratio and cut it down.
- Scale it downTwo gallons of vinegar with two pounds of sugar will pickle something like 20-25 lb of small cucumbers. A quarter batch — 2 quarts vinegar, 1/2 lb sugar, and a quarter of each spice — fills about four quart jars.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar in 1879 varied widely; modern distilled or cider vinegar at 5 percent acidity is what makes this keep. Do not dilute it with water, and do not substitute a low-acid specialty vinegar.
- Bag the spices"Pulverized" spices poured loose into the vinegar will cloud the brine and settle as grit on the pickles. Tie the ground cinnamon, cloves, mace, allspice, ginger and celery seed in a doubled square of muslin so they can be lifted out.
- TurmericTwo tablespoonfuls is doing colour work, not flavour — it is what makes the old "yellow pickle" yellow. It stains wooden spoons and plastic permanently and will stain hands temporarily; use stainless and glass.
- Garlic and horseradish go in coldThe instruction is deliberate. Both lose their sharpness in boiling vinegar, so they are added after the syrup has cooled. "One tablespoonful garlic" means chopped or bruised cloves, roughly three or four.
- Boil the vegetables brieflyThe pre-boil in plain vinegar appears to act as a blanch, setting the colour and driving out air; the original gives no time. Two or three minutes is enough for small cucumbers, and much longer risks softening them.
- "Snaps"Most likely snap beans — green beans picked young. "Gherkins" in American usage of the period usually meant very small pickling cucumbers, though the name was also applied to the burr gherkin, a distinct species.
- PepperThe two tablespoonfuls of "pepper" mean ground black pepper; the optional teaspoonful of "red pepper" is cayenne. Both are worth adding at the low end and adjusting after a week, since ground spice keeps strengthening in the jar.
- StorageThe original assumed a stoneware crock in a cool cellar. Pack into clean jars, cover completely with the spiced vinegar, and refrigerate; they are ready in about two weeks. For shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested water-bath canning procedure for cucumber pickles rather than this text.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1879, drew on the contributions of "two hundred and fifty of Virginia's noted housewives," which is why so many entries close with an initial or a name — "Mrs. S." contributed this pickle vinegar, quantities for a crock and all. The turmeric is the telling ingredient: bright yellow spiced pickles are conventionally traced to American kitchens through the British piccalilli and "mangoed" pickle tradition, itself said to be borrowed from Anglo-Indian cookery, and by the mid-nineteenth century a jar of yellow pickle was a familiar presence on a Southern table for cutting the richness of salt pork, ham and fried food. Sugar in this quantity marks it as a sweet pickle rather than a plain sour one.