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Lime Relish
12 thin-skinned limes 1/2 pint (I cup) vinegar 1/4 pint (1/2 cup) water 1½ ozs. (1½ cups) sugar Wash the limes and soak them in cold water for twenty-four hours, changing the water several times. In the morning put them in an earthenware dish over the fire, cover with cold water, and boil till a straw can penetrate them easily.
The text as printed stops after the limes are boiled tender, leaving the vinegar, water and sugar unused. Read it as the first half of a two-stage pickle: soak and soften the fruit, then finish it in syrup.
- The hinge: the 24-hour soakLime peel is intensely bitter, and the long cold soak with several water changes is what makes the relish edible rather than harsh. Skip it or shorten it and no amount of sugar will cover the result.
- The missing finishThe original page simply breaks off after the boiling, with the vinegar, water and sugar unused. A plausible completion, though nothing on the page states it: drain the limes, slice or quarter them, and simmer them in the vinegar, water and sugar until the peel looks translucent and the syrup has thickened. Judge by eye rather than by a set time.
- UnitsThe bracketed figures are the book's own rough American equivalents rather than exact conversions: an imperial 1/2 pint is 10 fl oz, closer to 1 1/4 US cups than the 1 cup printed, and 1/4 pint is 5 fl oz. 12 oz of sugar is about 340 g. Any ordinary bottled vinegar will do.
- "An earthenware dish over the fire"The casserole of this period was a glazed earthenware pot set directly on the range. Much modern earthenware is not flameproof and will crack on a burner; use enamelled cast iron, stainless steel or another non-reactive pan. Avoid bare aluminium and bare cast iron, which vinegar will react with.
- LimesThin-skinned means the small, thin-peeled fruit — Key or Mexican limes suit this far better than the thick-skinned Persian limes sold as standard. Twelve small limes is roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb.
- StorageTreat this as a refrigerator pickle: pack the hot fruit and syrup into clean jars, cool, and keep chilled, where it will hold for several weeks and improve after the first one. The recipe gives no processing time or headspace, so do not treat it as a shelf-stable canning method; use a current tested process if you want a sealed jar.
- YieldHard to state, since the page stops before the syrup stage; expect somewhere between a pint and a half and two pints. Served in small quantities beside curry, cold meat, cheese or oily fish.
Sweet-sour lime pickles of this kind are often said to have reached British kitchens through the Anglo-Indian table, where sugared and vinegared citrus preserves stood alongside chutneys as a standard relish for curry and cold joints. Its appearance in a book devoted to casserole cookery reflects what that word then meant — a glazed earthenware vessel used on the range as much as in the oven, equally at home stewing meat or softening fruit for a preserve. The instruction to test with a straw rather than a fork is an old kitchen habit, a broom straw being the traditional gauge for doneness in fruit and cake alike, and it survives in this book long after thermometers had become available.