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Ripe Cucumber Pickles
Take twenty-four large cucumbers, ripe and sound, six white onions, four large red peppers; pare and remove the seeds from the cucumbers, chop well, not too fine; then chop fine onions and peppers, mix thoroughly with one cup salt, one ounce white mustard ; place in a muslin bag; drain twenty-four hours, remove to glass jars, cover with cold vinegar and seal. They will keep a long time and are excellent.--Mrs. A. F. Conkey,
This is a raw-packed, unprocessed pickle sealed cold and stored at room temperature, which is outside anything current preserving practice allows. The notes below explain the specific failures rather than offering a corrected method.
- No heat at any stageNothing in the recipe is ever brought to temperature: the vegetables are chopped raw, drained raw, jarred raw, and covered with cold vinegar. There is no step that would destroy spoilage organisms or spores, and no boiling-water or pressure process to seal the jars safely.
- Unknown vinegar strengthNineteenth-century household vinegar, often homemade from cider, varied in strength and could fall below the 5 percent acetic acid that modern tested pickle recipes require. Without a known acidity there is no way to know whether the pack reaches a pH low enough to be safe.
- Onions and peppers are low-acidBoth the onions and the peppers are low-acid vegetables, as are the cucumbers that make up the bulk of the pack. In a sealed jar held at room temperature, an under-acidified mixture of this kind is a recognised setting for Clostridium botulinum growth, which need not produce any smell, taste, or visible sign.
- The salt is deliberately removedThe salt is largely drained off -- Much of the cup of salt goes with the vegetable liquid over twenty-four hours, so it contributes far less to preservation in the finished jar than the quantity suggests. Its main role here is to draw out water, leaving the packed pickle largely dependent on vinegar of unspecified strength.
- Twenty-four hours in a cloth bagChopped raw vegetables hanging in muslin at kitchen temperature for a full day is a long hold before any acid is added at all; the heavy salting is what was relied on to restrain spoilage during it.
- "Seal" meant something elseIn a book of this period sealing a jar typically meant a cork, wax, or a rubber-ringed lid pressed down cold. It is a barrier against air, not a process, and the phrase should not be read as canning in the modern sense.
- If you want this flavourUse a current tested recipe for cucumber relish or pickle from a reliable preserving authority, which will specify vinegar acidity, headspace, and processing time.
Sweet and chopped pickles filled whole chapters of Southern and Midwestern community cookbooks, where recipes often arrived signed by the contributor. "Ripe" cucumbers here means the mature, yellowing fruit left too long on the vine, too seedy and thick-skinned for a whole-fruit dill but perfectly usable once pared, seeded, and chopped -- a thrift measure at the tail end of the cucumber season. The white mustard seed is often said to have done double duty, mustard being traditionally credited with helping to keep a pickle as well as flavour it, and cold-packed "unboiled" pickles of this kind are generally thought to have been valued for leaving the vegetables crisp. Household preserving guidance did not gain measured acidity standards, tested processing times, or any understanding of botulism in sealed jars until the twentieth century, which is why so many nineteenth-century recipes that once ended "they will keep a long time" now read as cautionary documents.