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Pickled Nasturtium Seeds
(for salads) Use those that are small and green. Pickle them in salt and water for a week before the picnic, changing water twice. Drain off brine, and cover with hot vinegar with a very little alum in it.
When well made these are as good as imported capers and pep up any portable salad.
A caper substitute made from the green seed pods of Tropaeolum majus, the common garden nasturtium. The whole thing hinges on picking the pods young: once they begin to dry and turn tan they go woody and hot, and no amount of brining softens them.
- What you are pickingThe "seeds" are the plump green pods that form where the flowers have dropped, in clusters of three. Gather them the size of a small pea and still soft enough to dent with a thumbnail.
- Brine strength is not givenThe original says only "salt and water," with the water changed twice over the week. A strong salt brine is usual for a pickle of this kind; work from a current pickling recipe if you want a number. Keep the pods fully submerged under a weight and hold the jar somewhere cool.
- Rinse before the vinegarA week in salt leaves them very salty. Drain, rinse in cold water and drain again before covering, or the finished pickle will be too aggressive for a salad.
- The alumThis is food-grade pickling alum (potassium aluminium sulphate), still sold in the spice aisle. "A very little" means a pinch per pint at most; more turns the pickle astringent and metallic. Young pods are firm already, and modern practice generally leaves it out.
- VinegarUse a standard 5% cider or white wine vinegar, brought just to a boil and poured over the drained pods to cover them completely.
- Not a canned preserveHot vinegar poured into a jar is not a heat process. Cap and refrigerate; the pods keep for several months chilled and are better after two or three weeks, once the harshness of the vinegar has settled.
- YieldNasturtiums pod a few at a time, so pick over several days and hold the harvest in the brine. A small jar is all most garden plantings will fill, which goes a long way as a garnish for salads and cold sauces.
Nasturtiums came to European gardens from South America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the name is the Latin word for cress, traditionally explained as nasus tortus, nose-twister, for the peppery bite shared by the leaves, flowers and pods. True capers are the flower buds of the Mediterranean shrub Capparis spinosa, which will not grow in most of the northern gardens where nasturtiums thrive, so English and American cookbooks from the eighteenth century onward recommended pickling nasturtium "berries" as a homegrown stand-in; the comparison to "imported capers" here is the standard selling point, repeated for two centuries. Its place in an outdoor cookery book is practical: a sharp, salty condiment that travels in a small jar can carry a plain picnic salad of cold vegetables a long way.