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To Make Oil Mangoes
Put the mangoes in strong brine for five days. Wash them, and remove the seed. Stuffing for the same. 1 1/2 pound white mustard-seed. 1/4 pound pounded ginger. 1/2 pound black pepper, pounded. 4 tablespoonfuls celery-seed. 3 ounces mace.
Mix these ingredients with as little oil as possible, stuff the mangoes with it, adding scraped horseradish and one blade of garlic. Pour cold vinegar over them, and pound salt. Press the mangoes under the vinegar, and watch them closely. It is well to scald the vinegar in the spring.--Mrs. H. T.
This is a stuffed pickle of the old Virginia type, and the first thing to know is that no mango is involved. The second is that the method belongs to an era of open crocks and daily inspection, and it cannot be reproduced safely from these directions.
- "Mangoes" are melonsIn American and British cookery of this period a "mangoe" is a small, firm, immature muskmelon or cucumber, hollowed and stuffed with spice to imitate the imported Indian mango pickle. The word was even used as a verb: to mangoe a melon.
- No acid is specifiedThe recipe says only "cold vinegar," with no strength and no quantity. Nineteenth-century household vinegar varied widely in acetic acid, and a stuffed, low-acid melon interior will not reliably reach the pH needed to be shelf-stable. Modern pickling recipes specify 5 percent vinegar and a measured ratio for exactly this reason.
- Oil, garlic and an anaerobic centreThe stuffing is bound with oil and includes a blade of garlic, sealed inside a vegetable cavity and held under liquid at room temperature. Oil-covered garlic and vegetable matter of uncertain acidity is a recognised setting for Clostridium botulinum, and spoiled food may carry no reliable warning of smell, gas or off taste.
- The brine is unmeasured too"Strong brine for five days" gives no salt-to-water ratio and no temperature. A brine strong enough to preserve and one that merely salts the fruit are far apart, and five days at a warm kitchen temperature behaves nothing like five days in a cool spring house.
- "Watch them closely" is the giveawaySo is the note about scalding the vinegar in spring. Both read as instructions for managing spoilage as it appears rather than preventing it, consistent with pickles kept in open crocks and looked over by hand.
- The quantities are for a barrel, not a jarThe quantities are large -- A pound and a half of white mustard seed, half a pound of black pepper, a quarter pound of ginger and three ounces of mace come to roughly two and a half pounds of dry stuffing, far more than a single jar's worth.
- If you want stuffed picklesUse a current tested pickling recipe with measured vinegar strength, weighed salt and a specified process. Do not adapt this one.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions signed with initials such as this "Mrs. H. T.," contains many preserving recipes that assume a cellar, a spring house and constant attention. Stuffed "mangoes" appear repeatedly in books of this kind, and the name records a piece of trade history: pickled mango from India reached British and colonial tables through the East India trade and was much admired, then imitated with the small green muskmelons and cucumbers that grew at home. The stuffing here, heavy on mustard seed, ginger, black pepper and mace, reaches for the aromatic heat of the imported original. In nineteenth-century American cookbooks "mangoes" commonly meant this domestic imitation rather than the fruit.