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Pickled Onions
Pour boiling water over the onions and let them stand until the brine gets cooled; then change the brine for nine mornings, warming it every day. The ninth day put them in fresh water, and let them soak one day and night. Then put the spices and vinegar on the fire, and let them come to a boil, and drop in the onions in a few minutes; add sugar to your taste.--Mrs. A. H.
A nine-day brining routine written for a cook who already knew the proportions, which means the two things most likely to trip you up — how salty the brine is and how much vinegar to use — are left unstated. The hinge is the last step: the onions go into boiling spiced vinegar for only a moment, and any longer turns them soft.
- The brine is salt water, and the strength is missing"Pour boiling water over the onions" assumes salt has already gone into the crock; the liquid is called brine in the next clause. The original gives no figure at all, so treat this as genuinely unspecified rather than a conversion problem.
- Nine mornings of changing brineThe repeated warm change draws liquid out of the onions before pickling; it is not a fermentation step. The vessel should be kept cool and covered, and any onion that goes soft or slippery should be discarded rather than carried forward.
- Use pickling or kosher saltTable salt with iodine and anticaking agents will cloud the brine and can darken the onions. Any non-iodized salt works.
- Vinegar strengthNineteenth-century household vinegar varied widely. Use commercial cider or white vinegar at 5 percent acidity and enough to cover the onions in the jar by an inch.
- "Drop in the onions in a few minutes"The intent is that the spiced vinegar boils, the spices infuse for a few minutes, and only then do the onions go in — briefly, so they heat through without cooking. Onions left to simmer lose their snap entirely.
- SpicesThe recipe names none. Common pickling spices of the period include mustard seed, whole black pepper, allspice, cloves and mace; choose among them. Tie them in cheesecloth if you want a clear brine.
- Onion choiceSmall pickling onions, silverskins or peeled boiling onions about an inch across. Larger onions will not hold their texture through nine days of brining.
- StorageThe recipe gives no sealing or processing step. Pack the hot onions and vinegar into clean jars, cool, and keep them refrigerated; use a current tested canning recipe if you want them shelf-stable.
- YieldThe original gives no quantities. As a working guess, two pounds of small onions fills roughly two pint jars and needs about two cups of vinegar to cover them once packed.
Pickled onions belong to the long English tradition of vinegar preserves that came into Virginia kitchens more or less intact, and the extended pre-soak in changed brine has the look of an older method. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), edited by Marion Cabell Tyree, was assembled from contributions by named and initialed Virginia housewives, which is why this one ends with "Mrs. A. H." rather than a tested measurement; the book was a collection of what worked in particular households, not a standardized manual. Pickles of this sort would presumably have served as a table condiment through the winter, eaten with cold meat and salt fish when little else was sharp or crisp.