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Lemons, to Pickle, with the INGREDIENTS
6 lemons, 2 quarts of boiling water; to each quart of vinegar allow 1/2 oz. of cloves, 1/2 oz. of white and chilies, 1 oz. of mustard-seed, 1/2 stick of pepper, 1 oz. of bruised ginger, 1/4 oz. of mace sliced horseradish, a few cloves of garlic.
Put the lemons into a brine that will bear an egg; let them remain in it 6 days, stirring them every day; have ready 2 quarts of boiling water, put in the lemons and allow them to boil for hour; take them out and let them lie in a cloth until perfectly dry and cold. Boil up sufficient above ingredients, allowing the same provinegar to cover the lemons, with all the portion as stated to each quart of vinegar.
Pack the lemons in a jar, pour over the vinegar, &c., boiling hot and tie down with a bladder. They will be fit for use in about 12 months, or rather sooner.
SEASONABLE. --This should be made from November to April.
Lemons, To Pickle without the Peel. INGREDIENTS.-6 lemons, 1 lb. of fine salt; to each quart of vinegar, the same ingredients as in the last recipe. times, so as not to divide them and rub the Peel the lemons, slit each one down 3 salt well into the divisions; place them in a pan, where they must remain for a week, them in a Dutch oven before a clear fire turning them every other day; then put until the salt has become perfectly dry; LEMON WINE. then arrange them in a jar. Pour over sufficient boiling vinegar to cover them, to which have been added the ingredients mentioned in the foregoing recipe; tie down closely and in about 9 months they will be fit for use.
SEASONABLE. - The best time to make this is from November to April.
Note. After this pickle has been made from 4 to 5 months, the liquor may be strained and bottled and will be found an excellent lemon ketchup.
Two related Victorian pickles: whole lemons salted, blanched and steeped in heavily spiced vinegar, and a peeled version cured in dry salt. Both are long-keepers rather than quick pickles, and the spicing list in the original has run together, so treat the quantities as a guide.
- The spice list is jumbledAs printed, the weights and spice names have become detached from one another. A workable reading for each quart of vinegar is 1/2 oz cloves, 1/2 oz white pepper, 1/2 oz chilies, 1 oz mustard seed, 1 oz bruised ginger, 1/4 oz mace, plus sliced horseradish and a few garlic cloves. Adjust to taste rather than treating the figures as fixed.
- "A brine that will bear an egg"This is the standard Victorian test for a strong salt solution: add salt to cold water until a fresh egg floats with a coin-sized patch of shell above the surface. That is well short of full saturation, in the region of a pound of salt to a gallon of water. Use plain pickling or kosher salt; iodised salt can cloud the liquor.
- The missing boiling timeThe instruction to boil the lemons "for hour" has lost its fraction. A quarter of an hour is the usual figure in pickle recipes of this type, and it is enough to soften the peel without collapsing the fruit.
- Drying the fruitAfter boiling, the lemons must be genuinely dry and cold before they meet the vinegar, or the pickle goes cloudy and slack. Spread them on a rack overnight in a cool room.
- "A Dutch oven before a clear fire"In the second recipe this means an open-fronted metal reflector oven set facing the hearth, used for dry heat. A modern approximation is the lowest oven setting with the door propped, until the salt on the cut surfaces is dry to the touch.
- Tying down with a bladderA pig's bladder was soaked, stretched over the jar mouth and tied; it shrank as it dried to give an airtight seal. Use a glass jar with a vinegar-proof plastic-coated lid instead. Bare metal lids corrode badly in contact with hot spiced vinegar.
- Storage and maturingTwelve months for the whole lemons and nine for the peeled ones are maturing times, not shelf life claims. Keep the jars in a cool dark cupboard, make sure the fruit stays fully submerged in vinegar, and discard the lot if you see mould, fizzing or a slimy liquor.
- Yield and useSix lemons want at least a quart jar, and about a quart of vinegar to cover them. The pickle is a condiment: a wedge or two chopped fine into a mutton stew, a curry or a cold-meat sauce goes a long way.
- The lemon ketchup noteStraining and bottling the liquor after four or five months gives a thin, sharp, spice-heavy sauce in the old sense of "ketchup" -- a seasoning liquid, not a tomato relish. Once bottled, keep it refrigerated and use it as you would Worcestershire sauce.
Pickled lemons appear in English cookery books from the eighteenth century onward, and Mrs Beeton's version sits squarely in that tradition: whole fruit cured in salt, then held under strongly spiced vinegar for months before it is judged fit to eat. The spicing -- mustard seed, ginger, mace, chilies, garlic, horseradish -- reflects the Anglo-Indian taste that ran through Victorian store-cupboard cookery, and the result is a close cousin of the salt-preserved lemons of North Africa and the lime and lemon pickles of the Indian subcontinent, though the route by which such methods reached British kitchens is a matter of plausible inference rather than documented transmission. The recipe gives no reason for its "seasonable" note pointing to November through April. The closing note on straining the liquor for lemon ketchup is a reminder that in this period "ketchup" meant any thin, keeping, savoury seasoning liquid -- mushroom, walnut, oyster and lemon were all common -- and that a thrifty kitchen expected two products from one jar.