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Bottled Pickles
Wash and wipe a half bushel of medium-sized cucumbers, suitable for pickling, pack close in a stone jar, sprinkle over the top one for pickling, pack close in a stone jar, sprinkle over the top one pint of salt, pour over a sufficient quantity of boiling water to cover them , place a cloth over the jar, and let stand until cold (if prepared in the evening, let stand all night), drain off the water, and place the pickles on stove in cold vinegar, let them come to a boil, take out, place in a stone jar, and cover with either cold or hot vinegar. They will be ready for use in a few days, and are excellent. It is an improvement to add a few spices and a small quantity of sugar.
To bottle them, prepare with salt and boiling water as above, drain (when cold), and place a gallon at a time on a stove in enough cold vinegar to cover level (need not be very strong), to which a lump of alum about the size of a small hickory-nut (too much is îujurious) has been added. Have on stove, in another kettle, a gallon of the very best cider vinegar, to which add half a pint of brown sugar ; have bottles cleansed and placed to heat on stove. in a large tin-pan of cold water; also have a tin cup or small pan of sealing -wax heated; on table, have spices prepared in separate dishes, as follows: Green and red peppers sliced in rings; horseradish roots washed, scraped, and cut in small pieces, black and yellow mustard seed (or this may be left out), each prepared by sprinkling with salt and pouring on some boiling water, which let stand fifteen minutes and then draw off; stick cinnamon washed free from dust, and broken in pieces, and a few cloves. When pickles come to boiling point, take out and pack in bottles, mixing with them the spices (use the cloves, horse-radish and mustard seed, sparingly); put in a layer of pickles, then a layer of spices, shaking the bot tles occasionally so as to pack tightly; when full cover with the boiling hot vinegar from the other kettle (using a bright funnel and bright tin cup), going over them a second time and filling up, in order to supply shrinkage, for the pickles must be entirely covered with the vinegar. Put in the corks, which should fit very snugly, lift each bottle (wrap a towel around it to prevent burning the hands), and dip the corked end into the hot sealing-wax; proceed in this manner with each bottle, dipping each a second time into the wax so that they may be perfectly secure. If corks seem too small, throw them in boiling water; if too large, pound the sides with a hammer. The tighter they fit in the bottles the better for the pickles. Glass cans, the tops or covers of which have become defective, can be used by supplying them with corks. Pickles thus bottled are far more wholesome than, and are really superior to, the best brand of imported pickles, and, by having materials in readiness, prepared as directed, the process is neither difficult nor tedious. It requires two persons to successfully bottle pickles.-Mrs. Florence W. Hush, Minneapolis.
This is a full home-preserving procedure, not a quick refrigerator pickle, and the parts that make preserving safe — a measured acid strength, a measured headspace, a tested seal, a timed heat process — are all absent. The notes below explain the recipe rather than repair it; for shelf-stable pickles, use a current tested recipe from a food-preservation authority.
- The seal is the central problemCorks driven into bottles and dipped in sealing wax do not produce a vacuum seal, and there is no processing step after filling. A wax-and-cork closure can fail slowly and invisibly, admitting spoilage organisms into jars that are then stored at room temperature for months.
- Unmeasured acidityThe recipe explicitly says the first vinegar "need not be very strong" and never states an acetic acid percentage for either kettle. Safe pickling depends on the finished brine holding the product below pH 4.6; nineteenth-century household vinegar varied widely in strength and cider vinegar sold today is not a controlled substitute. Without a measured 5 percent vinegar and a fixed vinegar-to-water ratio, the acidity of the packed bottles is unknown.
- AlumPotassium alum was the standard crisping agent and the author's warning that "too much is injurious" was well founded. It is no longer recommended for pickling; it contributes nothing to safety, its firming effect is marginal, and excess aluminium salts are best avoided. A "small hickory-nut" is roughly a teaspoon's bulk, which gives a sense of the era's dosing but is not an endorsement.
- Half a bushelA half bushel of cucumbers is about 25 lb of the medium-sized fruit the recipe calls for. The pint of salt sprinkled over the top is a dry volume measure whose weight depends on the grain (roughly 10 to 20 oz), dissolved in whatever boiling water it takes to cover; the resulting brine strength is therefore also unmeasured.
- The stone jarA "stone jar" is a glazed stoneware crock. It is used here as an open vessel for the overnight salting, and in the first, unbottled method it also holds the finished pickles under vinegar. Modern stoneware and decorative crocks may carry glazes not intended for acidic food contact.
- Two kettles, two vinegarsThe scheme is worth understanding even if you do not follow it: the first, weaker vinegar with alum is a hot dip that firms and heats the cucumbers, and the second kettle of best cider vinegar sweetened with half a pint of brown sugar is the packing liquid. The spices are layered dry into the bottle and the hot vinegar is poured over twice to make up shrinkage.
- "It requires two persons"The closing line points to how fast the operation had to move: bottles had to be packed, corked and dipped in molten wax while everything was still hot. The recipe does not say how the two workers divided the task.
Bottled pickles were a status item in the American kitchen of the 1880s. Imported English pickles from firms such as Crosse & Blackwell commanded a high price, and the confident boast here — that home-bottled cucumbers are "far more wholesome than, and are really superior to, the best brand of imported pickles" — may glance at the documented use of copper vessels or copper salts to green commercial wares, though the motive attributed to the contributor is inference. Alum, meanwhile, was standard household practice for crispness throughout the nineteenth century. Like most of The Dixie Cook Book, the recipe is a signed contribution from a subscriber, and the Minneapolis address of Mrs. Hush is more simply explained by this book's descent from the Minneapolis-published Buckeye/Practical Housekeeping line of subscriber-contributed compilations. The confident, procedural tone — spices laid out in separate dishes, bottles warming in a pan of water, wax melting in a tin cup — belongs to an age before tested processing times, when a cook's authority rested on having done the thing many times and had it come out well.