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Strawberry Pickles
Place strawberries in bottom of jar, add a layer of cinnamon and cloves, then berries, and so on; pour over it a syrup made of two coffee-cups cider vinegar, and three pints sugar, boiled about five minutes; let stand twenty-four hours, pour off syrup, boil, pour over berries, and let stand as before, then boil berries and syrup slowly for twenty-five minutes; put in jars and cover. The above is for six quarts of berries. Pine apples can be made in same way, allowing six and a half pounds of fruit to above proportions. - Mrs. T. W. Jones, Charleston, S. C.
A spiced sweet pickle of the kind meant to be set beside cold ham or roast fowl rather than eaten as jam. The method is sound, but the measurements assume a nineteenth-century kitchen and a household that put up fruit in bulk.
- The two soaks are the pointPouring hot syrup over the fruit, then drawing it off, reboiling and repouring it after the first day, draws water out of the berries and replaces it with sugar syrup over the 48 hours, so the fruit firms rather than dissolves. Skip the standing time and the final 25-minute boil is likely to reduce the berries to pulp.
- Coffee-cupIn American books of this period a coffee-cup is usually reckoned at about 1 cup and a teacup at rather less, commonly half to three-quarters of a cup, though usage was not standard. On that reading two coffee-cups of vinegar is roughly 1 pint.
- Three pints sugarSugar was measured by volume: 3 pints is 6 cups, about 2 lb 10 oz. Against 6 quarts of berries this is a lean syrup, which works only because the fruit gives up a great deal of its own juice during the first standing.
- Vinegar strengthUse standard 5 percent cider vinegar. Nineteenth-century cider vinegar varied widely, and a low-acid artisan vinegar will leave the pickle both flat-tasting and less well preserved.
- Spices are unspecifiedNo quantity is given for the cinnamon and cloves. Whole spices are meant, not ground; a reasonable reading is a stick or two of cinnamon and a teaspoon of whole cloves per quart of fruit. Tie them in muslin unless you want to fish cloves out of every spoonful.
- Choose the fruit accordinglySmall, firm, slightly underripe berries hold their shape through three heatings. Large modern supermarket strawberries, selected for size and shipping, are more likely to slump.
- Scale it downSix quarts of berries is a canning-day quantity. A quarter batch works cleanly: 1.5 quarts berries, half a cup of vinegar, 1.5 cups sugar.
- Sealing"Put in jars and cover" is open-kettle sealing, which was standard then and is no longer considered a reliable seal. Treat the result as a refrigerator pickle and use it within a few weeks, or follow a current tested water-bath process for spiced fruit.
- Pineapple versionThe recipe gives six and a half pounds of fruit to the same proportions but does not say whether that is trimmed or whole weight. Cut into chunks; it takes the same three-stage treatment.
Sweet pickled fruit — peaches, pears, watermelon rind, cherries, and here strawberries and pineapple — was a familiar category in American cookbooks of the later nineteenth century, and was served as a relish with meat in the way chutney or cranberry sauce is now. The Dixie Cook Book, like the Buckeye books it grew out of, was assembled largely from contributions signed with the name and town of the woman who sent them in, which is why this one carries Mrs. T. W. Jones of Charleston. Strawberries were among the more unusual candidates for the treatment, being fragile and short-seasoned; the repeated draw-off-and-reboil described here is the standard preserver's answer to that fragility, and the same technique underlies candied fruit and old-style brandied peaches. Pineapple appearing as an alternative is a reminder that Caribbean fruit was reaching Southern ports, Charleston among them.