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Pickled Cucumbers (Put them in a wooden or stone)
Put them in a wooden or stone vessel, pour over strong salt and water boiling hot, put a weight on to keep them under the pickle. After three days, pour it off, boil, and turn it over again: let stand three days again; then take them out and let them be one night in plain cold water; next day put them over the fire, but do not let them boil, allowing one tablespoonful alum to one gallon vinegar; mace, cinnamon, peppercorns, white and black mustard-seed and grated horseradish, one tablespoonful each to every gallon vinegar, and one teaspoonful turmeric, and two and one-half pounds sugar. Fold a double piece of linen, and a soft, thick brown paper, and tie the jars tight; throw in the vinegar and keep in a dry place. A bladder and linen cloth are nice to be over the pots.--Mrs. G. P.
A two-stage pickle: a long salt cure in a crock, then a spiced sweet-sour vinegar poured over cold-ish. Most of the work is waiting, and most of the risk of failure is in the two lines about heat.
- The hinge: never boil the vinegar"Put them over the fire, but do not let them boil" is the whole trick. The point is to heat the cucumbers and vinegar through without a boil (modern practice puts that at somewhere around 180F); a hard boil softens the cucumbers and you get limp pickles.
- "Strong salt and water" is undefinedThe original gives no proportion. A common old test was a brine strong enough to float an egg, which works out at roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups of pickling salt per gallon of water. Because the strength here is a guess, treat the result as a refrigerator pickle rather than a shelf-stable one.
- AlumOne tablespoon per gallon of vinegar is potassium alum, sold as a crisping agent well into the twentieth century and still available in spice aisles. It is no longer recommended: it does little that a firm, fresh cucumber and gentle heat will not do, and in quantity it gives a puckery metallic edge.
- Spices should be wholeMace, cinnamon, peppercorns and the two mustard seeds are best whole (mace blades, cinnamon in stick pieces), one tablespoon of each per gallon. Ground spice clouds the vinegar and settles as sludge. Grate the horseradish fresh; jarred prepared horseradish brings its own vinegar, and creamed versions their own dairy.
- TurmericA teaspoon per gallon is for color, not flavor; it gives the yellow-green cast associated with old mustard pickles. It will stain a wooden spoon and a countertop badly.
- SugarTwo and a half pounds per gallon of vinegar is about 5 1/2 cups, which puts this firmly in the sweet-pickle family. Cider vinegar is the period assumption; use something at 5 percent acidity.
- The coveringLinen, brown paper, and a bladder tied over the pot were the era's answer to an airtight lid, keeping dust, flies and air off the surface. Use clean glass jars with plastic or lacquered lids instead; bare metal corrodes in vinegar.
- QuantityNo yield is given; the spice and sugar quantities are all keyed to the gallon of vinegar, so scale from that.
- Vessels"Wooden or stone" means a wooden tub or a glazed stoneware crock. Glass or food-grade plastic works; avoid aluminum, copper and cast iron at every stage.
This is one of hundreds of contributor recipes in Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and signed, as here, only with initials — a form that made the book a record of a particular circle of Virginia households as much as a cookbook. The method itself is older than the book: salting cucumbers down in a crock for days, changing and re-boiling the brine, then finishing them in spiced sweet vinegar follows what is often described as the usual English pickling sequence carried into American kitchens, and the alum and turmeric mark it as belonging to the mustard-pickle tradition that also produced piccalilli and chow-chow. The instruction to tie the jars with linen and brown paper, with a bladder as the premium option, is a reminder that the pickle had to be acid and sweet enough to protect itself.