Celery (Ereis Put the vinegar)

What survives here is the tail end of a mustard pickle — the spiced vinegar poured over cauliflower — and the loss is not trivial: every quantity, along with the treatment of the vegetables themselves, belonged to the missing lines above.

• The text is a fragmentThe page opens mid-word ("ereis" is the end of a broken line) and the header's "Celery" does not match the cauliflower in the body. The ingredient list, the proportions and the preparation of the vegetables are all absent.
• No measured acidityA vinegar pickle is safe because the finished brine is acid enough to stop bacterial growth, and that depends on the strength of the vinegar and the ratio of vinegar to vegetable. Neither figure survives, so nothing about this batch can be verified.
• Oil in an unsealed jarOil is stirred into the hot vinegar and the whole is "put away" in glass or stone jars once cool, with no boiling-water processing and no sealing described. Because the vinegar strength and proportions are missing, there is no way to know the pack is acid enough; an oil layer over vegetables of unverified acidity held at room temperature is the kind of anaerobic condition in which Clostridium botulinum can grow, and it gives no smell, taste or gas to warn you.
• Raw or barely treated vegetablesMany printed mustard-pickle recipes of the period direct that the cauliflower be brined overnight and drained, and some that it be scalded, before the hot dressing goes over it. None of that appears here, and hot vinegar poured over cold florets will not cook them or draw out much of their water.
• Use a current recipeMustard pickle and chow-chow are still made, and modern tested recipes give vinegar strength, weights and processing times. Follow one of those rather than reconstructing this.
• Porcelain-lined kettleAn enamelled pan, called for because bare iron or copper reacts with vinegar and turns the pickle grey or metallic. Stainless steel or enamel does the same job now.
• Mustard and turmeric as thickenerThe two are slaked in cold vinegar before going into the hot — the same technique as slaking flour or cornflour, and for the same reason: dry mustard powder dropped into hot liquid lumps instantly. Turmeric here is doing the colouring that gives mustard pickle its yellow.