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Pickled Onions and Cucumbers
Peel twelve cucumbers and three large onions, cut them all into thick slices and sprinkle over with salt. Leave them thus for a day, then drain well, put them in a stone-jar, pour over sufficient boiling vinegar to cover and keep them in a warm place for a day. Drain off the vinegar again and repeat the process till both the onions and cucumbers are quite green, adding a little pepper and ginger, the last time of boiling. Tie down and pack away in a cool place.
A straightforward hot-vinegar pickle of the old open-kettle school, written when a cook was assumed to know how long a day is and how sour her vinegar was. Two things need attention: the greening, and the keeping.
- Do not chase the greenThe instruction to repeat the boiling "till both the onions and cucumbers are quite green" descends from the practice of heating pickles in an unlined brass or copper pan, which produced a vivid green through copper salts. Repeated boiling vinegar alone will only soften the slices; boil them twice at most and accept an olive colour.
- Vinegar strengthUse a standard 5 percent cider or white wine vinegar and do not dilute it. Victorian vinegar varied widely in strength, and no acidity is stated here.
- The salting"Sprinkle over with salt" means a generous hand: roughly 2 tablespoons of coarse salt per pound of sliced vegetables, layered in a colander set over a bowl. A full day draws out a surprising volume of liquid, which is the point; drain it and do not rinse more than briefly.
- Stone jarA glazed earthenware crock. Any non-reactive vessel works, glass or stoneware. Avoid aluminium and bare cast iron with hot vinegar.
- "A warm place"In a coal-range kitchen this meant the back of the stove or a warming shelf. A turned-off oven with the light on, or a countertop in a warm room, is the modern equivalent; it is a soaking step, not a cooking step.
- Pepper and gingerNo quantities are given. For twelve cucumbers and three onions, about a tablespoon of whole black peppercorns and a two-inch piece of sliced fresh ginger, or a teaspoon of ground, added to the final boiling vinegar.
- "Tie down"Originally a round of paper or cloth tied over the crock mouth, which is not an airtight seal. Treat the finished pickle as a refrigerator pickle: transfer to clean jars, make sure the vinegar covers everything, cap, and keep cold. This process is not a substitute for a tested boiling-water canning recipe if you want shelf storage.
- Yield and useTwelve cucumbers and three onions make a large quantity, several quart jars' worth. Keep refrigerated; after repeated boilings the slices will be soft rather than crisp. A pickle of this kind would have been served as a relish alongside cold meats.
Sliced cucumber-and-onion pickle in a sharp spiced vinegar is one of the oldest fixtures of English and American household cookery, long predating the 1890s, when Oscar Tschirky put his name to a cookbook. Its presence in a Waldorf book is a reminder that a grand hotel kitchen still had to produce the plain relishes that went beside cold roast beef and cheese at lunch. The insistence on greenness is the telling detail: cooks were long taught that a good pickle should be bright green, an effect commonly obtained by boiling in unlined brass, and the resulting copper contamination was among the first food adulterations to be publicly attacked, notably by Frederick Accum in his 1820 treatise on adulteration. By Oscar's day the expectation of a green pickle still lingered in the wording.