Lemon Pickle
Rasp the lemons a little and nick them at one end; lay them in a dish with very dry salt, let them be near the fire, and covered. They must stand seven or eight days, then put in fresh salt, and remain the same time; then wash them well, and pour on boiling vinegar, grated nutmeg, mace, and whole pepper. Whenever the salt becomes damp, it must be taken out and dried. The lemons will not be tender for nearly a year. The time to pickle them is about February.--Mrs. A.
This is an eighteenth-century English store pickle carried into a Virginia collection: whole lemons dry-salted for a fortnight, then covered with spiced hot vinegar and left to mellow for the better part of a year. No quantities are given anywhere, which is normal for the form but means you are working by proportion and eye.
- The hinge: the salt must stay dryThe whole method rests on the salt drawing water out of the peel and that water being driven off rather than sitting in the dish. The instruction to remove and dry the salt whenever it goes damp is not optional housekeeping fussiness; damp salt in a warm place is where a wet, sour mess starts.
- "Rasp the lemons"Scrape the surface lightly with a rasp or the fine side of a box grater to take off a little of the outer zest and break the oil cells. Do not grate down to the white. The nick at one end is a shallow slit, not a cut through.
- "Near the fire"A warm, dry, airy spot — the top of a range, a warming shelf, an airing cupboard. The recipe gives no temperature; read it as gently warm, not hot. A modern oven with only the light on is about right; anything warmer will cook the peel.
- Proportions the recipe omitsNo quantities are given. Salt cures of this type are usually handled generously, so plan on enough coarse salt to pack well around the lemons, and replace it entirely at the halfway point as the recipe directs. Non-iodised salt is the usual recommendation, iodised salt being said to darken the peel.
- Vinegar strengthUse a commercial vinegar of 5 per cent acidity — cider or white wine vinegar suits the spicing. Bring it to a boil and pour it over the lemons in a sterilised jar, hot. Home-brewed or unlabelled vinegar of unknown strength is the one substitution to avoid, since the acid is what keeps the jar sound over the long ripening.
- Mace and whole pepperMace is the lacy aril around the nutmeg seed, sold as blades; a blade or two per pint is plenty. "Whole pepper" here means black peppercorns. Grated nutmeg goes in sparingly — a quarter teaspoon per pint will carry.
- VesselsGlass or glazed stoneware only, never bare aluminium, copper or unlined iron, at any stage. The combination of salt and hot vinegar will strip a reactive pot and taint the pickle metallic.
- During the year's keepingStore in a cool dark place with the lemons fully under the vinegar; a small glass weight or a folded round of parchment keeps floaters down. Topping up with fresh boiled vinegar as the level drops is standard. Any fuzzy growth, or a soft, cloudy, off-smelling jar, means the batch goes out.
- February, and how it is usedThe month most likely reflects supply — winter citrus at its best and cheapest — rather than any property of the season, though the recipe does not say. Lemon pickle of this kind was generally a seasoning rather than a side dish: the peel chopped fine into fish sauces, gravies and made dishes, and the spiced liquor used by the spoonful much as you would Worcestershire.
Lemon pickle was a staple of the eighteenth-century English store cupboard, and it appears in the standard household books of the period — Elizabeth Raffald and her contemporaries treat it as a base seasoning to be reached for whenever a made dish or a fish sauce wanted sharpening, in the same slot that bottled ketchups and "catsups" occupied. Its long life in print owes something to economics: a cook who put up lemons in February had citrus flavour on hand in August, before refrigeration and before year-round imports. Its arrival in Housekeeping in Old Virginia (published in the late 1870s), credited only to "Mrs. A.", is typical of that book's construction — Marion Cabell Tyree assembled it from contributions by some 250 Virginia housekeepers, and some of the receipts they sent in show clear descent from older English sources.