Pickles
We should be sorry for those who have to eat pickles. The craving for this condiment usually implies a sickly digestion and a jaded appetite. It also implies bad cookery-being the substitute for a sauce which the cook ought to provide. But since pickles we must have, it is desirable that they should be good; and it is a sad thing to chronicle that the craft of making good pickles is departing from England. This country used to make the most wonderful mixed pickles; and the name for them, together with the square green English bottle for them, has gone abroad over the earth. In the deserts of Arabia, and in the Mountains of the Moon, the forlorn traveller has lighted on empty bottles of Day and Martin' S Pie blacking and of Crosse and Blackwell's pickles, and his heart has rejoiced at eve, as Mungo Park did over a solitary flower in the burning wastes of Africa. But now No More, and alas! No More. As Mr. Tennyson says- Oh sad No More! oh sweet No More!
Oh strange No More!
Surely all pleasant things had gone before, Low buried fathom-deep beneath with thee, No More.
The best mixed pickles, even those of the great magicians of Soho, Crosse and Blackwell, are now made with a woebegone compound called Piccallilli. The good old sort is neglected; and the best English pickles of that kind come at present from Bordeaux (from Louis Frères et Cie.), in bottles of English shape, and with the English name of Mix'd Pickles. Why is this? One cause may be excess of competition-leading to lowering of price, cheapening of vinegar, and general deterioration. But another, and even more powerful cause, is to be found in a transition of English taste. East India pickles strange, irrecognisable compounds confused with curry, an amazing jumble of hot, sweet, sour, and bitter things-have come into fashion. Manufacturers-even those who, like Crosse and Blackwell, take the highest rank-truckling to this fashion, turn their chief skill to put an Oriental tinge on their mixed pickles; and when they affect to produce these in all their original simplicity, they do so almost as if the old English receipt were no longer worthy of respect. The favour which has been recently shown to the Bordeaux pickles of Louis Frères et Compagnie ought to teach them a lesson.