No. 785
Gherkins
Cornichons
Barely a recipe in the modern sense — Ranhofer assumes you already have a crock of pickled gherkins from his elementary methods and is telling you how to dress them for the table. The work is in the pickling, which happens elsewhere in the book.
- The missing cross-referenceNo. 96 is the pickling instruction, and it is not on this page. Without it you need a separate, tested gherkin pickle — brine-salted overnight, then covered with hot spiced vinegar — before this dish exists at all.
- Cornichons are a size, not just a nameThe French word means "little horn," and the pickle depends on picking the cucumbers at 1-2 inches, when they are still firm and seedless. Full-grown pickling cucumbers give a soft, hollow result no dressing will rescue.
- "Hot peppers" in 1894Most likely small pickled red peppers already in vinegar rather than fresh chiles, though Ranhofer does not specify a variety. Fresh peppers added to a vinegar dressing will taste raw and green against the cured gherkins.
- Shallots and onions bothProbably not redundant: the shallots for perfume, the onions plausibly small pickled ones of the cocktail-onion type, though Ranhofer does not say which. If you use raw onion, slice it thin and let it sit in the vinegar for twenty minutes first.
- Tarragon and vinegarPresumably tarragon leaves plus a spoonful of good vinegar, or simply tarragon vinegar, which was in use in kitchens of the period and is easy to make by steeping the herb for a week. Add it sparingly — the gherkins are already acid, and the tarragon is there for anise perfume, not sharpness.
- KeepingDressed this way the dish is meant to be eaten the same meal. The fresh shallot and herb will go slack and dull within a day even under refrigeration.
- Yield and serviceFigure two to three gherkins per person as part of an hors-d'oeuvre service. It belongs on a small shallow dish alongside olives, radishes and anchovies, not as a course in itself.
This is entry 785 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled after some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. Its placement among the cold side dishes — between wild-bird eggs and Westphalian ham — shows how the American luxury restaurant of the period handled the French hors-d'oeuvre: a row of small sharp things set out to be picked at, with pickles doing the same work an amuse-bouche does now. Cornichons themselves are the classic French vinegar pickle, made from cucumbers harvested tiny rather than left to swell, and they were served then as now against charcuterie, pâté and boiled beef. That Ranhofer bothers to dress them at all, rather than simply tipping the jar onto a dish, is characteristic of the book's habit of giving an item a garnish and a name so it can be listed on a menu.