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Cucumbers for Present Use
Mrs. Riley.
The best way of utilising cucumbers for present use is to parboil them in a solution of water, vinegar, and salt. They should be split in two before boiling, and, if done properly, will present a beautiful green colour.
A two-sentence note rather than a full recipe: no quantities, no times, no yield. What follows is what you need to fill in, and the one period trick you should not copy.
- "Present use" means eat it nowThis is a quick cooked vegetable, not a preserve. Nothing here is acidic or salty enough to keep cucumbers safely for any length of time; treat the result as a side dish for the same meal, refrigerated at most a day.
- The brine is unmeasuredMrs. Riley gives no ratio at all. A workable starting point for a pound or two of cucumber is about 4 cups water, 1/4 cup vinegar and 1 tablespoon salt, but the original genuinely does not specify and any reading of it is a guess.
- Parboil means briefTwo to four minutes in barely simmering liquid for split cucumbers, until the flesh turns translucent at the edge and still has resistance in the middle. Cucumber is over 95 percent water and collapses into slime if boiled through.
- Do not chase the green in a copper panThe "beautiful green colour" that period cooks prized was often produced by cooking vegetables in unlined copper or brass, or by adding a copper salt; alum appears in the same recipes, though it firms rather than greens. Cooking in copper put dissolved copper into the food, and later Victorian writers warned against "greening" on those grounds. Use stainless steel and accept a paler result; acid in the pot works against bright green anyway.
- Choose the cucumber accordinglyCucumber varieties common on nineteenth-century tables tended to be larger, thicker-skinned and seedier than modern salad types. Modern field cucumbers should be peeled and the seed core scraped out after splitting; English or Persian cucumbers can go in as they are.
- Season after, not duringThe vinegar-and-salt bath flavours the surface only. Drain the halves well, then dress them warm with butter, pepper and a little of the cooking liquid, or chill and dress with oil and dill.
- YieldTwo medium cucumbers, split, serve three or four as a vegetable.
The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) is generally credited as the first fundraising community cookbook compiled in Canada, assembled from contributions by "ladies of Toronto and other cities and towns" with proceeds going to the Hospital for Sick Children — which is why so many of its entries, like this one, arrive as a signed opinion rather than a tested formula. Mrs. Riley's note reflects a real nineteenth-century suspicion of raw cucumber, which medical writing of the period blamed for indigestion and worse; cooking, salting or pickling it was the respectable treatment, and "for present use" distinguished this quick method from the crocks of vinegar pickles put down for winter. The prized "beautiful green colour" belongs to the same era's fascination with brightly greened vegetables.