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Pickled Cauliflower
After cutting off all the green leaves, put the cauliflower into boiling water, with a good supply of salt, and boil from three to five minutes; take them out of the salt and water, dip them in clear cold water one minute to send the heat to the heart of the cauliflower, cut them in pieces convenient to put in jars, then make a mixture of one tablespoonful of mace, one of cloves, one of allspice, one of ginger, two of white mustard seed, and a red pepper pod; with each a gallon of vinegar. Let the mixture boil and pour it upon the cauliflower; cover it closely and let it stand one week; then pour off the vinegar, scald it, and return it hot again to the cauliflower; then put it in jars ready for use. The best cider vinegar should be used, and if it is not perfectly clear it will dissolve the cauliflower.
A straightforward whole-spice vinegar pickle, written for cooks who knew what a jar of pickles was supposed to look like. Two things need attention: the vinegar's strength and the spice quantities, which the original states loosely.
- The hinge: vinegar strengthUse commercial cider vinegar labelled 5% acidity, and use it undiluted. The book insists on 'the best cider vinegar' and warns that vinegar that is not 'perfectly clear' will dissolve the cauliflower; the likeliest explanation is unpasteurized barrel vinegar carrying mother and spoilage organisms, though the book does not say so. Modern pasteurized vinegar is filtered and consistent.
- How much vinegar"With each a gallon of vinegar" reads awkwardly; the likeliest reading is that the whole spice list goes into one gallon of vinegar, not a gallon per spice. Scale down proportionally for two or three heads.
- BlanchingThree to five minutes in heavily salted boiling water is a short blanch; note that the recipe blanches the head before cutting it into pieces, not after. Longer and the pieces collapse once the hot vinegar hits them a second time. The book gives the cold dip as a way 'to send the heat to the heart of the cauliflower'; in practice it also stops the cooking.
- SpicesMace is the outer covering of nutmeg, sold in blades or ground; blades are better here. Use whole cloves, whole allspice and whole white mustard seed (sold today as yellow mustard seed) rather than ground, or the brine turns muddy. Tying the spices in cheesecloth makes the final scald easier.
- The two-stage processThe week's standing draws water out of the cauliflower and dilutes the vinegar; the recipe has you pour it off, scald it and return it hot. Do not skip it, and use clean jars for the second filling.
- StorageThis is a refrigerator pickle by modern standards. The recipe gives no sealing or processing step, so keep the finished jars cold and eat within a couple of months; for shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested water-bath procedure instead.
- SaltNo quantity is given for the blanching water; 'a good supply' is all the book says. Any well-salted water will do, and the salt is discarded with the blanching liquid.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. A gallon of vinegar plus the packed cauliflower will fill several quart jars. The pickle needs at least the week of standing and the second scald before it is ready.
Pickled cauliflower belongs to the long English tradition of whole-spice vinegar pickles that also produced piccalilli and pickled walnuts, and it travelled to North American kitchens intact: mace, cloves, allspice, ginger and mustard seed are essentially the same spice cabinet an eighteenth-century cook would have reached for. Its presence in The Home Cook Book — a community compilation of the 1870s, assembled from contributed receipts and sold for charity — places it squarely in the domestic preserving repertoire of the period. The insistence that the vinegar be "perfectly clear" is suggestive, though the reason is a matter of inference rather than record: before pasteurized vinegar, cooks may well have judged strength and soundness by eye.