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Yellow Pickle (Ounces black mustard-seed)
2 ounces black mustard-seed. 2 ounces white mustard-seed. 2 ounces celery-seed. 1 ounce coriander. 1 ounce white pepper. 1 ounce green ginger. 2 ounces turmeric. 1 pound brown sugar.
Put these in one and one-half gallons best cider vinegar, and set in the sun. This can be prepared during the winter, if you choose. Quarter your cabbages (small heads about the size of a large apple are best), and put in a tub. Make a strong brine,boil and pour over while hot. Let them stand twenty-four hours and then repeat. On the third day spread them on a board or table, salt them slightly, and let them stand in the hot sun four days, taking care that no dew shall fall on them. Put in a jar, and pour on your prepared vinegar boiling hot. This pickle will not be ready for the table till it has softened and absorbed the vinegar. You can judge of this by your taste. To make quick pickle by this recipe, you simply salt your cabbage for one night, pouring off in the morning the water drawn out by the salt. Then put in the kettle with the spices and vinegar, and boil until a straw will go through.-Mrs. J. B. D.
A sun-steeped mustard-and-turmeric vinegar poured over salted, sun-wilted cabbage. The spice quantities are by weight, and the vinegar is the whole preservative — nothing here should be diluted.
- The hinge: the cabbage must be dryFour days of salting and sun are there to drive water out of the heads so the finished pickle is not slack and the vinegar is not weakened. If you shorten this step, use the quick-pickle variation at the end instead of splitting the difference.
- Ounces are weight, not volumeTwo ounces of mustard seed is roughly 5-6 tablespoons; two ounces of ground turmeric is something like a third to a half cup, a deliberately heavy hand and where the yellow comes from. An ounce of whole coriander seed is roughly 5-6 tablespoons. The recipe does not say whether the coriander and turmeric are whole or ground.
- Green gingerThis means fresh ginger root, not preserved or crystallised. An ounce is a piece about the size of a thumb; slice or bruise it rather than grating.
- "Set in the sun"A solar infusion. The recipe gives neither vessel nor duration, so a covered jar left in the sun for anywhere from several days to a few weeks is a reasonable reading. A warm windowsill works; so does simply steeping the spiced vinegar in a cool cupboard for two or three weeks, shaken occasionally.
- Strong brinePeriod receipts often gauge a strong brine by whether it will float an egg, which takes on the order of a pound of salt to the gallon of water. Boil it, pour it over the cabbage hot, and repeat once as directed.
- Use plain vinegar and non-reactive vesselsModern cider vinegar runs about 5 percent acidity; the recipe itself asks only for "best cider vinegar." Steep and boil in glass, stainless or enamel; turmeric and vinegar will stain and corrode aluminium and bare cast iron.
- Quick-pickle timing"Until a straw will go through" is a tenderness test rather than a clock; expect somewhere around 10-20 minutes of simmering for quartered small heads, and stop there, since past that the cabbage collapses.
- Yield and keepingA gallon and a half of spiced vinegar will cover something like 8-10 pounds of small cabbages — this is a crock-sized batch, easily quartered. The jars are not heat-processed, so keep the finished pickle cold and eat it within a few months; if you want shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested pickling procedure.
- Outdoor dryingFour days of open-air wilting is the least controlled part of the method. Cover the cabbage with cheesecloth against insects and bring it in before dusk, as the recipe warns about dew.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions credited only by initials, is thick with pickles and catsups. "Yellow pickle" takes its name from the turmeric, which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reached Anglo-American kitchens through the same trade that brought the mustard-and-turmeric pickles known variously as piccalilli, chow-chow and Indian pickle o attempts at reproducing the mixed pickles and achars of India — the family is generally traced to British attempts at reproducing the mixed pickles and achars of India. This version leans on the sun: the spiced vinegar ripens outdoors, the cabbage wilts outdoors, and the recipe assumes a long stretch of hot dry weather. The note that the vinegar may be prepared "during the winter, if you choose" is a reminder that pickling was scheduled around the garden and the calendar, not the afternoon.