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Dill Pickles
To put up dill pickles, select smooth cucumbers of medium size, wash them thoroughly in cold water, and pack them in a cask, placing first a layer of dill (aromatic seeds so well known to German cooks) and vine leaves, then a layer of cucumbers and so on until the desired quantity has been obtained. Then tightly close the barrel, making a brine from nine quarts of water to one of salt and pour enough through the bung-hole to cover well the cucumbers. After two or three days drain the brine from the cucumbers, boil again and after it has cooled pour it over the cucumbers. The bung-hole in the top of the barrel is left open until the cucumbers begin to ferment, after which it is closed with a stopper. To obtain a good result, the cucumbers should be kept well under the brine. When the barrel is open a stone should be placed on the pickles to keep them down.
PICCALILLI-Chop very fine one peck of green tomatoes, six green peppers and four onions. Stir all together with one cup of salt, and let the mixture stand over night. In the morning pour off what water may have accumulated and cover with vinegar, adding one cup of horseradish; one cup of sugar; one tablespoon of cloves; one tablespoon of cinnamon; one tablespoon of allspice. Cook slowly until tender, tasting at last, and adding more salt if needed. Do up in wide-mouthed bottles.
Two separate preparations run together in one paragraph: a salt-fermented barrel dill pickle, and a cooked vinegar piccalilli of green tomatoes. The dill pickles are a genuine lacto-fermentation, not a vinegar pickle, and everything depends on keeping the cucumbers submerged.
- The hinge: everything stays under the brineAny cucumber or leaf that floats into the air will mold, and the mold will soften the whole crock. The book's stone is still the right answer; a plate weighted with a water-filled jar or a glass fermentation weight does the same job. Skim any surface scum as it forms.
- Brine strengthNine quarts of water to one of salt works out to roughly 8-12 percent salt by weight, depending on whether the quart is filled with fine or coarse salt. Either way it is at the strong end of the fermenting range and well above the levels usual in modern fermented-dill instructions. It ferments slowly and yields a markedly salty, long-keeping pickle of the old barrel type. Use pickling or kosher salt with no iodine and no anti-caking agent, both of which cloud brine.
- The reboiling stepDraining, boiling and re-pouring the brine after two or three days appears to have been intended as a keeping measure for cellar-stored barrels. Boiling kills the lactic bacteria that have just started work and can encourage softening; modern fermentation instructions generally omit it.
- Dill means the whole plantDespite the parenthesis about seeds, a barrel pickle wants full flowering dill heads with stalks, several to a gallon of brine. Seed alone gives a thinner flavor.
- Vine leavesGrape leaves, and by extension oak, cherry or horseradish leaves, contribute tannins that inhibit the enzymes that turn cucumbers limp. They are decorative-looking but functional; without them, trim the blossom end of each cucumber instead, since that is where the softening enzyme concentrates.
- Vessel and conditionsA cask with a bung is not a modern option. A stoneware crock, a wide glass jar or a food-grade plastic bucket with a loose cover works; the open bung-hole simply lets fermentation gas escape, which any loose lid or airlock will do. Hold it at 65-72F. Expect cloudiness and bubbling within a few days and sour, fully translucent pickles in one to three weeks depending on size, after which they go into the refrigerator.
- Peck, for the piccalilliA peck of green tomatoes is about 12 to 14 lb, which makes a very large batch; quartering the whole recipe is sensible for a home kitchen. The tablespoon measures suggest ground spices, though the book does not say; ground spice will cloud the mixture, so tie whole spices in cheesecloth if you want it clearer.
- The piccalilli's unmeasured vinegar"Cover with vinegar" leaves the finished acidity unknown, and "do up in wide-mouthed bottles" is open-kettle bottling with no heat processing. Treat it as a refrigerator relish to be eaten within a few weeks, or follow a current tested recipe if you intend to can it for the shelf.
The parenthetical gloss on dill as "aromatic seeds so well known to German cooks" tells you who the barrel dill pickle belonged to in American eyes at the time: German, Polish and Jewish immigrant households, whose salt-fermented cucumbers in a cellar cask were still a foreign practice to be explained rather than assumed. Vinegar pickles were the Anglo-American default; the sour fermented pickle reached the general public largely through urban delicatessens and pushcarts. The piccalilli beside it comes from the other tradition entirely, a mustardy, spiced chopped-vegetable pickle whose name is generally traced to eighteenth-century English cookery in imitation of Indian pickles, and which in America was often used up green tomatoes stripped from the vines before the first hard frost.