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Onions, Spanish, Pickled
INGREDIENTS. - Onions, vinegar; salt and cayenne to taste.
Cut the onions in thin slices; put a layer of them in the bottom of a jar; sprinkle with salt and cayenne; then add another layer of onions and season as before. Proceeding in this manner till the jar is full, pour in sufficient vinegar to cover the whole ONIONS, SPANISH. and the pickle will be ready for use in a month.
SEASONABLE. May be had in England from September to February.
A cold-pack vinegar pickle with almost no quantities given, which is normal for Victorian pickle instructions but leaves several things to fill in. The hinge is submersion: any slice sitting above the vinegar line will spoil and take the jar with it.
- Keep everything under the vinegarPack the slices down and add vinegar until they are fully covered, then weight them with a small glass disc, a folded piece of baking parchment, or a zip bag of brine. Onion is buoyant and will float into the air gap otherwise.
- Vinegar strength is unstatedBeeton's readers would most likely have used malt vinegar, whose strength was not standardised as it is now. Use a vinegar labelled 5 per cent acidity (malt, cider or plain distilled); anything weaker, including most "drinking" or artisanal vinegars, is not reliably acidic enough for a month-long pickle.
- Spanish onionsLarge, mild, straw-skinned sweet onions; what is sold today as a "Spanish onion" is broadly comparable, though the label has been applied loosely. The recipe gives no quantities: use as many sliced onions as your jar will hold, allowing for them to settle once the salt draws water out.
- SaltPlain sea or pickling salt is the safest choice; iodised table salt and anti-caking agents are often said to darken or cloud a pickle. The recipe only says to sprinkle each layer, so keep it light -- the salt here is seasoning rather than a full brine cure.
- CayenneThe recipe gives no quantity. Start with a small pinch per layer and taste after a week; it goes on extracting into the vinegar for the whole month.
- The jarWash and dry the jar in a hot oven or a dishwasher cycle first, and use a plastic or plastic-lined lid. Bare metal lids corrode over a vinegar pickle and will taint it within weeks.
- Storage and the monthA cool dark cupboard at British larder temperature is what is meant here; a modern centrally heated kitchen is warmer. Refrigerating the jar is the safer equivalent, and once opened keep it in the fridge and eat within a couple of months.
- TextureThese stay soft rather than crisp - thin raw slices in vinegar collapse a little. They are a condiment for cold meat, cheese and bread rather than a crunchy pickled onion.
- SeasonableThe note refers to the old English market season for imported Spanish onions, September to February. Sweet onions are now available year-round, so treat it as a note on the book's period rather than an instruction.
Pickling was one of the ordinary preserving duties of a Victorian kitchen, and Beeton's pickle recipes run to walnuts, red cabbage, gherkins, nasturtium buds and onions of several kinds. The "Spanish" onion was a genuine import - large, mild, flat-topped onions shipped to British ports through the autumn, which is exactly the September-to-February window the seasonable note records. Their mildness is the point: unlike the small silverskin onions pickled whole in spiced vinegar, a sweet Spanish onion could be sliced raw and cold-pickled without needing to be scalded or brined for days first. Cayenne, widely used in nineteenth-century British cooking, does the work that whole spices do in a more elaborate pickle.