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Cucumber Pickles
Cover the bottom of cask with common salt; gather the cucumbers every other day, early in the morning or late in the evening, as it does not injure the vines so much then as in the heat of the day; cut the cucumbers with a short piece of the stem on, carefully iaying them in a basket or pail so as not to bruise; pour cold water over and rinse, being careful not to rub off the little black briers, or in any way to bruise them, as that is the secret of keeping them perfectly sound and good for any length of time. Lay them in a cask three or four inches deep, cover with salt, and repeat the operation until all are in; pour in some water with the first layerafter this the salt will make sufficient brine. Now spread a cloth over them, then a board with a stone on it. When a new supply of cucumbers is to be added, remove stone, board and cloth, wash them very clean, and wipe every particle of scum from the top of the pickles and the sides of the cask; throw away any soft ones, as they will spoil the rest; now put in the fresh cucumbers, layer by layer, with salt to cover each layer. When cask is nearly full, cover with salt, tuck cloth closely around the edges, placing the board and weight on top; cover cask closely, and the pickles will be perfect for two or three years. Cucumbers must always be put in the salt as soon as picked from the vines, for if they lie a day or two they will not keep. Do not be alarmed at the heavy scum that rises on them, but be careful to wash all off the board and cloth. When wanted for pickling, take off weight and board, carefully lift cloth with scum on it, wash stone, board and cloth clean, and wipe all scum off the cucumbers and sides of cask, take out as many as are wanted, return the cloth, board and weight, and cover closely. Place the cucumbers in a vessel large enough to hold two or three times as much water as there are pickles, cover with cold water (some use hot), change the water each day for three days, place the porcelain kettle on the fire, fill half full of vinegar (if vinegar is very strong add half water), fill nearly full of cucumbers, the largest first and then the smaller ones, put in a lump of alum the size of a nutmeg, let come to a boil, stirring with a wire or wooden spoon so as not to cut the cucumbers; after boiling one minute, take out, place in a stone jar, and continue until all are scalded, then pour over them cold vinegar. In two or three days, if the pickles are too salt, turn off the vinegar and put on fresh, add a pint of brown sugar to each two gallons pickles, a pod or two of red pepper, a very few cloves, and some pieces of horseradish. The horse-radish prevents a white scum from rising.
This is a two-stage process: cucumbers are dry-salted into their own brine and held in an open cask for up to three years, then freshened and finished in hot vinegar. The first stage is what puts it out of reach today, because nothing in it is measured.
- Why the salt stock fails modern practiceSalt-stock curing works only at a brine strength high enough to shut out spoilage organisms — commercially around 10 percent salt by weight, checked with a salometer or hydrometer and topped up as the cucumbers give up water. This recipe specifies salt only as "cover with salt" and adds water at the first layer alone, so the actual concentration is unknown and drifts every time fresh cucumbers are added. A brine that falls short goes soft and putrid rather than sour, and there is no way to tell from the outside.
- The open caskThe instructions assume repeated opening over weeks of harvest, with the cloth, board and stone rewashed and the sides of the cask wiped each time and a heavy scum skimmed away. That is a yeast and mould mat feeding on the acid the ferment produces, which raises the pH from below and re-contaminates the surface with every handling. It is exactly the situation current food-safety guidance for fermented vegetables is written to prevent.
- The finishing step is not a preserveBoiling the freshened cucumbers one minute in vinegar and pouring cold vinegar over them in a stone jar is a flavouring step, not a processing step. There is no measured acetic acid strength ("if vinegar is very strong add half water"), no headspace, no seal and no heat process, so the jars are not shelf stable by any current standard. Use a tested modern pickle recipe if you want cucumbers to keep.
- Alum"A lump of alum the size of a nutmeg" is potassium aluminium sulphate, on the order of a teaspoon or two. Food-grade pickling alum is still sold and is not the problem here, but it is no longer recommended: it firms the skins by binding pectin while doing nothing for safety, and in quantity it leaves a metallic, astringent aftertaste.
- Reading the old measuresA cask here is a wooden barrel of unstated size; the recipe is scaled to a garden row, not a jar. "A pint of brown sugar to each two gallons pickles" and "a pod or two of red pepper" are among the very few proportions given anywhere in the process, which tells you how much was left to the cook's judgement.
- What the black briers are aboutThe insistence on not rubbing off the little prickles and on cutting the stem with a stub attached is sound observation, if not stated in modern terms: any break in the skin lets the softening enzymes in the blossom end and on the surface reach the flesh. Modern pickling directions make the same point by telling you to trim a slice off the blossom end and handle the fruit gently.
- "Some use hot"The three-day soak in changed water is desalting, not cooking. Warm water pulls salt out faster but also softens the cucumbers and speeds any spoilage in an already heavily loaded vegetable, which is presumably why this recipe gives cold water as the default and hot only as an aside.
The Dixie Cook Book belongs to the 1880s wave of large compiled American household books, and this entry is a farm procedure rather than a kitchen one: it is the technique known in the trade as salt stock, the same method by which commercial picklers held cucumbers from a short summer harvest until they had time to process them into sour, dill or sweet pickles months later. The logic behind the every-other-day picking and the immediate salting is that cucumbers arrive on the vine faster than any household can process them, and that a fruit left a day off the vine has already begun to soften at the blossom end. Alum for crispness and horseradish to discourage surface scum were both common nineteenth-century additions, the horseradish traditionally credited with checking the mould mat — a claim usually attributed to its mustard oils, though the books of the period simply state it as fact. The pH and processing standards that replaced advice like "do not be alarmed at the heavy scum" belong to the twentieth century.