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Cut Cabbage Pickle
Fill the jar with cut cabbage. To every gallon of cabbage put one handful horseradish. 3 tablespoonfuls black pepper. 1/2 tablespoonful red pepper. 3 tablespoonfuls coriander-seed. 3 tablespoonfuls celery-seed. 2 tablespoonfuls mace. 2 tablespoonfuls allspice. 1 dozen cloves. 1/2 teacup made mustard. 4 tablespoonfuls white mustard-seed. 1 pound sugar. 4 or 5 sliced onions. Salt your cabbage first as for slaw, and let it stand two or three hours. Put in a porcelain kettle and cover with weak vinegar; put turmeric enough to color, boil it till tender, then drain off the weak vinegar, and cover it with strong cider vinegar, and mix the spices well through it; add three or more tablespoonfuls turmeric, and boil the whole fifteen minutes very hard. When cold, it is ready for use.-Mrs. S. M.
A mustard-and-turmeric cabbage pickle of the chow-chow family, built in two stages: a tenderizing boil in weak vinegar that is then thrown away, and a second boil in strong cider vinegar carrying all the spice. Getting that two-vinegar sequence right is the whole point of the recipe.
- Do not skip the vinegar swapThe first, weak vinegar is a tenderizing boil, and it ends up diluted further by the cabbage's own water, which is why it is drained off. Only the second bath of full-strength cider vinegar preserves the pickle, so it must go in undiluted rather than being topped up over the old liquid.
- "Weak" and "strong" vinegarHouseholds of the period used vinegar of varying strength, and the contrast here is most likely undiluted vinegar against the diluted first bath. Use standard cider vinegar at 5 percent acidity for the second stage, and cut it by a third with water for the first if you want to follow the original.
- Porcelain kettleAn enameled cast-iron or stainless pot. Bare cast iron, aluminum or copper reacts with vinegar and turns the pickle metallic and grey.
- Teacup and made mustardA teacup is roughly 3/4 cup. "Made mustard" is prepared wet mustard, not powder — a smooth yellow or mild brown mustard is the closest match.
- Salt as for slawA workable modern reading is about 2 tablespoons of coarse salt per gallon of shredded cabbage, tossed and left to wilt. Drain and squeeze it well after the two or three hours; the original says nothing about rinsing, so taste and give it a quick rinse if it reads too salty.
- Fifteen minutes very hardThat final hard boil will cook the cabbage well past crisp; soft, thoroughly cooked pickles of this sort were usual. If you want any bite left, five to eight minutes at a strong simmer is enough to set the spices.
- TurmericThree-plus tablespoons is a lot by modern standards and is there for the yellow more than the flavor. Two tablespoons colors a gallon convincingly; it also stains wooden spoons and porous surfaces stubbornly.
- Yield and storageA gallon of cut cabbage is about 3 pounds and fills roughly four pint jars. This is written as a crock or refrigerator pickle, not a canning recipe — there is no sealing or processing step — so keep it cold and eat it within a couple of months. For shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested procedure.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1877, gathered contributions from Virginia households, which is why so many of its receipts carry initials rather than names. This one belongs to the chow-chow and piccalilli family — mustard, turmeric and mixed whole spice over chopped vegetables — a style generally traced to the British "Indian pickle" of the eighteenth century, itself an English reading of the pickles and achars encountered through the East India trade. Cabbage, onion and horseradish were the cheap and available parts of that formula in the American South, and a pound of sugar to the gallon marks it as a sweet pickle for the relish dish rather than a sour one. Pickles like this did steady work in a household without refrigeration: they used up a late cabbage crop and put something sharp beside plain winter meat.