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French Pickles
Three dozen large cucumbers, one dozen onions, peel and slice them. Sprinkle salt on them in layers and let stand three hours; then drain. Take four tablespoonfuls of olive oil, three tablespoonfuls of ground mustard, one teaspoonful of black pepper; mix with vinegar enough to cover; pour over cold.
A cold-packed mustard pickle of the kind kept in a crock and eaten within weeks, not a processed shelf pickle. The quantities are enormous by modern standards and the method assumes a cool cellar.
- Scale it downThree dozen cucumbers and a dozen onions is far more than a modern household will get through, especially as this is a refrigerator pickle. A third of the recipe -- one dozen cucumbers, four onions, and the seasonings reduced proportionally -- is more manageable, though it will still fill several quart jars.
- Which cucumbers"large cucumbers" here presumably means mature field-grown fruit with thick skin and developed seeds, which would explain the instruction to peel. Modern pickling (Kirby) cucumbers need no peeling; if using supermarket slicing cucumbers, peel them and scoop the seed core, which is watery and thins the brine.
- The salting is the hingeThree hours in salt layers is what draws water out and keeps the slices firm in an unheated brine. Do not shorten it, and drain thoroughly; pressing the slices in a colander is worth the trouble. The original leaves the salt quantity to judgement -- salt each layer generously.
- Vinegar strengthPeriod vinegar was variable. Use a standard 5 percent cider or white vinegar, undiluted, and enough to submerge the vegetables completely. Diluted or weaker vinegar gives markedly less protection, even in the refrigerator.
- Ground mustardThis is dry mustard powder, not prepared mustard. Whisk it into the oil first to a smooth paste, then thin with the vinegar; added directly to liquid it clumps and settles.
- Cold pack, cold storageNothing here is cooked or heat-processed, and the oil floats as a seal over low-acid vegetables. Keep the jars in the refrigerator, not a pantry, and eat within a month or two. Do not seal them for shelf storage as a canned pickle.
- Waiting timeThe recipe gives no curing period. The mustard and pepper need about a week in the cold before the flavour reads as a pickle rather than salted cucumber in vinegar.
"French pickles" in American cookbooks of the late nineteenth century seem rarely to have had much to do with France; the label appears to have signalled a pickle dressed with olive oil and mustard rather than boiled in spiced vinegar. What marks the recipe as its period is the assumption of a cool cellar or unheated pantry: with no processing, no sealing and no sterilised jars, the keeping depended entirely on salt, strong vinegar and a cold house.