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Mustard Pickles
1 Peck Cauliflower, Little Onions, and Small Cucumbers 1 Cup of Salt 1/2 Gallon Cider Vinegar 1/2 Pound Mustard 1 Tablespoon Turmeric 21/2 Tablespoons of Curry Powder 2 Tablespoons of Ginger 1 Teaspoon Cayenne Pepper Look over vegetables carefully and sprinkle with the salt between layers; cover with boiling water and let stand all night; drain and wipe dry; stir other ingredients in a little cold vinegar until the lumps are out, then stir it into the half-gallon of hot vinegar and keep on stirring until it comes to a scald. Pour over the pickles, stir it once or twice for a day or two and then put in glass jars.
A full-strength vinegar pickle of the piccalilli type, written for a household that put up bushels at a time. The quantities are large and the spicing is aggressive; both scale down cleanly.
- A peck is a lotA peck is 8 dry quarts, roughly 12-14 lb of mixed cauliflower florets, pearl onions and small pickling cucumbers. The recipe as written fills something like 6-8 quart jars; quarter it for a first attempt.
- "1/2 Pound Mustard"This means dry ground mustard powder, not prepared mustard from a jar. Half a pound is about 2 cups, which is what gives the brine its body and colour. The ginger and curry powder are likewise ground and dry.
- Salt for the overnight drawUse pickling or kosher salt. Iodized table salt clouds the brine and can darken the vegetables, and a cup of it by volume is considerably saltier than a cup of coarse salt.
- "Until it comes to a scald"Scald here means heating the spiced vinegar until just short of a rolling boil: steam rising and the surface trembling, somewhere around 180F in modern terms. Prolonged hard boiling is generally avoided, as some acetic acid can carry off in the steam.
- Vinegar strength mattersMost commercial cider vinegar is labelled at 5 percent acidity, and that acidity is what makes this preserve keep. Check the label, do not dilute it with water, and do not substitute a low-acid or homemade vinegar of unknown strength.
- Stirring out the lumpsDry mustard clumps instantly in hot liquid. Slaking the mustard, turmeric, curry, ginger and cayenne into a little cold vinegar first is the hinge of the whole recipe; skip it and the brine stays gritty.
- Dry the vegetables properlyAfter draining, wipe them genuinely dry. Water clinging to the cauliflower dilutes the brine and is the usual cause of a soft, weeping pickle.
- StorageThe book stops at "put in glass jars," which assumed a cold cellar and steady use. Keep these in the refrigerator, or follow a current tested water-bath processing schedule if you want them shelf-stable. Give them two or three weeks before eating.
- No sugar, no flourMany mustard pickles of this era are thickened with flour and sweetened. This one is not, so expect a thin, sharp, hot brine rather than a clinging yellow sauce.
Mustard pickle of this kind descends from English piccalilli, itself generally traced to the eighteenth-century British enthusiasm for "India pickle" -- vegetables preserved in vinegar with turmeric, ginger and mustard in imitation of South Asian achar. By the time American cookbooks of this sort were being compiled, the formula had settled into a fixture of the autumn kitchen: cauliflower, small onions and gherkins caught at the end of the garden season, salted overnight to draw water, then held in spiced vinegar through the winter. A peck-sized batch was not extravagant for a household that put up its own relishes -- enough to season a season's worth of cold meat, boiled beef and bread and cheese, at a time when a jar of something sharp on the table did much of the work that condiments off a supermarket shelf do now.