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Cucumber Chowder
Cut large cucumbers up and let stand over night in weak brine; drain and chop fine, adding to every gallon six onions, three peppers chopped fine; cover with vinegar, add one-half cup of sugar. Place on top a few small sticks horseradish. After standing one day, is ready for use.
A raw, quick-pack cucumber relish of the sort every late-Victorian pantry kept in a crock. It is not preserved for the shelf — it is ready in a day and meant to be eaten within weeks, which shapes most of the notes below.
- "Chowder" here means chow-chow"Chowder" here means a chopped pickle -- Nothing to do with soup. Some American cookbooks of this era head a chopped mixed-vegetable pickle, the sort usually called chow-chow, as a "chowder"; how far the two words were actually interchanged is unclear.
- The brine is genuinely vague"Weak brine" is not defined and the book assumes you know; period recipes differ widely in what they mean by it. The overnight salting is there to draw water out so the vinegar is not diluted into weakness — do not skip it, and drain thoroughly.
- Measure by the chopped gallonMeasure by the gallon -- The proportions hang on a gallon, most likely of chopped cucumber rather than whole ones, though the text does not say: about 16 cups, or roughly 6-8 lb of large cucumbers. Scale the onions, peppers and sugar from that.
- Which peppers"Three peppers" in a pickle recipe of this period most likely means sweet green peppers rather than chiles, though the book does not say. Three bell peppers to a gallon gives a mild relish; a hot pepper or two can be added, but that is a departure.
- Vinegar strengthUse a standard 5 percent cider or white vinegar and cover the vegetables completely. Homemade vinegars of the period varied wildly in acidity, which is one reason these pickles were eaten quickly rather than stored for a year.
- The horseradish sticksWhole pieces of root laid on top were traditional as much for keeping as for flavour, and they are easy to lift out later. Peeled sticks about the thickness of a finger work; grated horseradish will cloud the jar and turn the whole batch sharp.
- Salt choiceUse pickling or kosher salt for the overnight brine. Iodized table salt can darken the cucumbers and leave a faint metallic edge.
- Storage and yieldExpect roughly four quarts. Because there is no processing step and no measured acid ratio, keep it refrigerated in covered jars and use it within a few weeks; treat it as a fresh relish, and follow a current tested recipe if you want something shelf-stable.
Chow-chow relishes like this one were the workhorses of the American pickle shelf between the Civil War and the First World War: cheap, made from whatever the garden gave up at once, and eaten with the heavy salted and boiled meats that dominated winter cooking. The name's origin is disputed; it is usually traced to the pidgin English of the China trade, where chow-chow meant a mixture or medley, and it appears in nineteenth-century British colonial writing for a mixed pickle or sweetmeat before attaching itself in American and Nova Scotian kitchens to whatever chopped, vinegared vegetable mixture was to hand. What marks this particular version as a household rather than a commercial formula is how much it leaves unsaid: no salt weight, no vinegar strength, no jar count. The horseradish laid across the top is an old touch, credited in period sources with keeping the pickle from spoiling and the cucumbers from going soft, and it survives in home recipes long after refrigeration made it unnecessary.