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My Mother's Favourite Pickle
Mrs. Savage.
One quart raw cabbage chopped fine; one quart boiled beets chopped fine; two cups of sugar, tablespoon of salt, one teaspoon black pepper, one-fourth teaspoon red pepper , one teacup of grated horse-radish; cover with cold vinegar, and keep from the air.
A cold-packed beet and cabbage relish of the kind that once lived in a stone crock in the cellar. Nothing is cooked except the beets, so the vinegar is doing all the preserving work.
- The hinge: vinegar strengthUse a straight cider or white vinegar at 5 percent acidity and enough of it to submerge the vegetables completely. Anything diluted, or a level that lets the top layer sit dry, is what spoils this sort of pickle.
- Teacup and quartA nineteenth-century teacup is generally smaller than a modern measuring cup, commonly reckoned at around 3/4 cup, which would put the horseradish at roughly 6 ounces by volume; treat it as approximate. The quarts are measures of already-chopped vegetable, not whole heads or roots.
- How much you need to buyA quart of finely chopped raw cabbage takes roughly half a medium head, or one small one; a quart of chopped cooked beets takes roughly 2 lb of beets before trimming. Boil them whole and unpeeled until a skewer slides through, 30 to 45 minutes depending on size, then slip the skins off.
- HorseradishGrated fresh horseradish root is meant here. Bottled prepared horseradish is already packed in vinegar and salt and is milder; if you substitute, drain it and expect less heat. Grate fresh root in a ventilated spot or in a food processor with the lid on.
- ChoppingA processor will turn cooked beets to puree in seconds. Pulse the cabbage and beets separately, in short bursts, or chop by hand for the coarse texture the recipe intends.
- "Keep from the air"This means packed down under the vinegar with a tight cover, the nineteenth-century crock-and-weight method. Treat it as a refrigerator relish rather than a shelf-stable preserve: pack into clean jars, refrigerate, and use within a month or two. It is not processed for canning and should not be stored at room temperature.
- SeasoningTwo cups of sugar to two quarts of vegetable is sweet by modern taste; the preserving is being done by the vinegar, not the sugar. A quarter teaspoon of red pepper, meaning cayenne, is mild; the horseradish supplies most of the bite.
- Yield and servingTwo quarts of vegetable, and closer to three quarts once the sugar, horseradish and covering vinegar are in. Serve it as a condiment with cold roast beef, boiled tongue, ham or sausages, in the same role as chow-chow or beet horseradish.
Beet-and-cabbage relishes sharpened with horseradish run through both the Pennsylvania German chow-chow tradition and the Eastern European beet chrain served with cold meats. The Home Cook Book, first published in Toronto in 1877 and compiled from recipes contributed by named ladies of the city, is a compilation cookbook of exactly the sort that spread such formulas: a recipe like this one arrived attached to a household rather than a printed authority, which is why it carries both Mrs. Savage's name and the domestic title someone gave it. The instruction to "keep from the air" is the whole preserving theory of the period stated in five words, and the vagueness about how much vinegar is typical of recipes written for cooks who had made the thing beside their mothers.