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Pickled Cucumbers
Select two or three dozen large cucumbers, cut a piece out of the sides and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Care should be taken that the cucumbers be not over-ripe or yellow at the ends. Place in a vessel of salted water, and let them remain for nine days, or until they become yellow, stirring them up every two or three days, then take them out, put into a saucepan with a good supply of vine leaves, both under and over, pour in the brine in which they were soaked, place the saucepan over the fire and boil slowly for about five hours, take them out and drain dry. Stuff the cavity of each with a little horseradish, garlic, capsicum, mustard seed and peppercorns, care being taken to keep each ingredient as separate as possible without mixing; continue in layers until the cavity is filled up, then place in its proper position the piece that was cut out, and sew it up. Then into a saucepan pour one gallon or so of vinegar, enough to cover the cucumbers; add to each gallon one ounce each of cloves and mace, two ounces each of long pepper, ginger in slices, and Jamaica pepper, and three ounces of mustard seed, all tied in a muslin bag; also add a root of a horseradish cut lengthwise into strips, and a quarter of a pound of cloves of garlic. Place the saucepan on the fire and boil for about five minutes; remove the bag of spice, pour the whole over the cucumbers in jars sufficient to cover them, tie them over securely and let them remain for five or six days, when they will be ready for service. Pickled Cucumbers (Like Mango Pickles).
Take young, but fully grown, cucumbers, cut a small piece out of the side of each and scoop out the seeds, cover with salt and let stand for one night. Cut up into small pieces an equal quantity of horseradish, shallots and caper; mix them together with quarter their bulk of mustard seeds, the third of a grated nutmeg, one teaspoonful of bruised cloves and a small quantity of white pepper. On the following day dry the cucumbers on a cloth and stuff with the above mixture. Fix the pieces that were taken out of the sides in their places and bind them with twine to keep them in position. Put in large jars, packing them closely together, and pour over enough vinegar to cover them. Tie a piece of strong paper over each jar and put in a cool, dry place till wanted.
Two versions of the same Victorian showpiece: whole cucumbers hollowed, stuffed with spice, sewn shut and pickled. Neither can be followed safely as printed, and the reasons are worth understanding before you read the older glossary terms below.
- No salt concentration is given"A vessel of salted water" for nine days at room temperature is a cure, and a cure is defined by its brine strength. Too weak and you are incubating spoilage organisms in the dense, sealed interior of a stuffed cucumber rather than fermenting it; the recipe gives no weight of salt, no volume of water and no temperature. This alone puts it outside what can be reproduced responsibly.
- Vinegar strength is unstatedNineteenth-century household vinegar varied widely in acidity and was often home-made from cider or wine. Safe vegetable pickling depends on a known acid level throughout the product, and "one gallon or so of vinegar" tells you nothing about it. A modern tested pickling recipe specifies 5 percent acetic acid for exactly this reason.
- Stuffed whole cucumbers resist acidThe hazard is geometry as much as chemistry. A whole cucumber packed solid with horseradish, garlic and mustard seed and then sewn shut acidifies slowly and unevenly at the centre, so the interior can sit well above the pH that keeps pickles safe long after the surrounding liquid has turned sour.
- The second version is never heated at allIn the "like mango pickles" method the cucumbers are salted overnight, dried, stuffed raw with raw horseradish and shallot, tied, covered with cold vinegar and stored. Raw alliums submerged in liquid of unverified acidity and held in a closed jar is precisely the combination modern guidance warns against.
- A paper cover is not a seal"Tie a piece of strong paper over each jar" was standard practice when jars were crocks and pickles were eaten within the season. It admits air and insects and offers no protection over the months a modern reader would expect from a preserve.
- Vine leaves and the five-hour boilGrape leaves supply tannin, which keeps pickles crisp, and the long simmer in brine under and over the leaves was the old method of "greening" cucumbers to a bright colour. Some period kitchens hastened that green with copper or brass kettles, a practice repeatedly condemned as the resulting verdigris was recognised as a poison. Even without copper, five hours of boiling in an unmeasured brine is not a preserving step in any modern sense.
- Glossary of the spice listJamaica pepper is allspice. Long pepper is Piper longum, hotter and sweeter than black peppercorns and still sold by spice merchants. Capsicum here means dried hot chilli. Mace is the aril of the nutmeg. "Caper" in the second version is the pickled flower bud, used chopped as part of the stuffing.
- If you want the dishUse a current tested recipe for stuffed pickles with weighed salt, measured 5 percent vinegar and a specified processing method. Read this page for the flavourings and the technique of sewing the cucumbers shut, not for the method of preserving them.
Oscar Tschirky was never actually the chef of the Waldorf, but as maître d'hôtel he was its public face, and the 1896 book that carries his name is a vast compendium of what a great American hotel kitchen was expected to know. The second heading here, "Like Mango Pickles," preserves a usage that has almost vanished: in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English and American kitchens, to mango a vegetable meant to hollow it, stuff it with spice and pickle it whole, in imitation of the stuffed pickled mangoes that came from India through the East India trade. Cucumbers, small melons and green peppers were all mangoed, and the sewn-up cucumber, cut across to reveal its stripes of horseradish, garlic and mustard seed, was a piece of table theatre as much as a condiment. The long salt cure, the greening over grape leaves and the heavily spiced vinegar all belong to a preserving tradition that ran on judgement and experience rather than measurement, which is exactly why it reads so uneasily now.