Pickle

“ Let them lie covered over with a pickle of bay salt and water, one and a half pounds to the gallon, for three or four days, according to size; take them out and, wiping them separately, lay them in jars, and pour over them, when cold, this pickle:
It must be boiled fifteen minutes and skimmed well. Fill the jars so as to cover the fruit completely with the pickle. Tie bladder and leather over, and keep them eight or nine months. They will be very rich and choice pickles. ”

“ Pickles is pickles for the most part, but you’ll always get preferred pickles when you deal with us. Even your wife, excellent cook as she no doubt is, will be unable to make better pickles than ours. And to serve with those tasty party sandwiches, which mean so much to an experienced hostess, who would want to use any pickle except the perfect pickles that are the fame of Poppy’s Pickle Parlor? ”

“ For your pickle take a gallon or more, according to your quantity of asparagus, of white wine vinegar, and one ounce of bay-salt, boil it, and put the asparagus in your jar; to a gallon of pickle put two nutmegs, a quarter of an ounce of mace, the same of whole white pepper, and pour the pickle hot over them; cover them with a linen cloth, doubled three or four times, let them stand a week, and boil the pickle; after standing a week longer, boil the pickle again, and pour it on hot, as before; when they are cold, cover them close with a bladder and leather. ”

“ For having remarked how your common pickle in use among housewives was of no farther benefit than to preserve dead flesh and certain kinds of vegetables, Peter with great cost as well as art had contrived a pickle proper for houses, gardens, towns, men, women, children, and cattle, wherein he could preserve them as sound as insects in amber. ”

“ Probably they are fairly good pickles, as pickles go. Because I am in the pickle business myself is no reason why I should run down anybody else’s pickles. Yet, on the other hand, I feel that I have a right to uphold the superior quality of my own pickles. And it is of such pickles that I am going to make good your loss. Not store pickles, Mrs. Clayton, as we usually accept the term, but home-made pickles, of which the more you eat the more you want; pickles that you never tire of; pickles with the lasting, lingering taste; pickles with a skin you love to touch ”

“ Make pickle enough to cover it in the following proportions: 2 quarts vinegar, a dozen blades of mace, dozen white peppers, dozen cloves, two teaspoonfuls made mustard, [46] three tablespoonfuls white sugar, and a pint of the water in which the fish was boiled. Let them boil up once hard, that you may skim the pickle. Should the spices come away with the scum in large quantities, pick them out and return to the kettle. Set the liquor away in an earthenware jar, closely covered, to keep in the flavor. Next morning hang it over a brisk fire in a bell-metal kettle (covered) , and heat to boiling. ”

“ The cauliflowers must be divided into small bunches. Put all these into the pickle raw, and at the end of the season, when as many of the vegetables as could be procured have been added, store the pickle away in jars, and tie over with bladder. This old-fashioned method of preserving vegetables is largely employed by those who live in the country. The pickle should be kept for at least 3 months in a cool, dry place before being used.
2643.—MIXED PICKLES.
Ingredients.—An equal weight of small mild onions, sour apples and cucumbers, vinegar to cover. ”

“ About ten days after the blossoms have left the plants is the proper time to take these for pickling, and they should be immediately put into process, before they become shrivelled. Immerse half a peck of the clearest and soundest in a pan of cold salt and [Pg 167] water, and let them remain thus, changing the pickle every morning, for three days. ”

“ Seeing that it was useless to argue with him further, I sort of resigned myself to my fate as his pickle partner.
“I have a hunch,” says I, “that it’s going to be a whole lot worse than that. A Pickle Parlor! We’ll be the laugh of the town.” ”

“ To pickle Nasturtium-Buds:—Gather your little knobs quickly after your blossoms are off; put them in cold water and salt for three days, shifting them once a day; then make a pickle (but do not boil it at all) of some white-wine, some white-wine vinegar, eschalot, horse-radish, pepper, salt, cloves, and mace whole, and nutmeg quartered; then put in your seeds and stop them close; they are to be eaten as capers.
To keep Quinces in Pickle:—Cut five or six quinces all to pieces, and put them in an earthen pot or pan, with a gallon of water and two pounds of honey ”

“ The strongest vinegar must be used for pickling. It must not be boiled, as thereby the strength of the vinegar and spices will be evaporated. By parboiling the pickles in brine, they will be ready in half the time they would otherwise be. When taken out of the hot brine, let them get cold and quite dry before you put them into the pickle.
The articles to be pickled should be perforated with a larding pin, in several places, by which means they will the more readily imbibe the flavour of the pickle. ”

“ I strongly recommend the removal of the pickle jar from the dairy. When the layers of butter have been carried up to within an inch or so of the top of the firkin, the space between the surface of the butter and the edge of the vessel should be filled with fine dry salt, instead of pickle. A common mistake made is the holding over for too long a time of the butter: the sooner this article can be disposed of the better, for it never improves by age. ”

“ Accurate measurements and weights are most important in making pickles and relishes if a quality and safe product is to be the result.
Use only good quality fruits and vegetables. Select tender vegetables and firm ripe fruit. Pears and peaches may be slightly underripe for pickling. The pickling type cucumber is the variety you will want to use. The salad (slicing) variety does not make a crisp pickle. Contact your county Extension office for the variety grown in your area. ”

“ When he turned again with the cup he saw her, with eyes shining rapturously, beginning upon a huge Dill pickle that she had rooted out from the paper bags with a woman’s unerring instinct. He took it from her, laughingly, and poured the cup full of milk. “Drink that first,” he ordered, “and then you shall have some tea, and then a chicken wing. If you are very good you shall have a pickle to-morrow. ”

“ They are usually bought in pickle from grocers and oilmen, and ought to soak in cold water before they are used. The small, plump ones are the best—the pickle is red, the scales of the fish white. If cut into fillets and added to sliced cucumber, hard-boiled egg, also sliced, minced parsley and herbs, and dressed with the usual salad dressing, they form an acceptable variety in the salad series. ”

“ If you pickle a great many walnuts, and eat them fast, make pickle for a hundred or two, the rest keep in strong brime of salt and water, boiled till it will bear an egg; and as you pot empties, fill them up with those in the salt and water. Take care that they are covered with pickle. In the same manner you may do a smaller quantity; but if you can get rape vinegar, use that instead of salt and water. Do them thus:—put your nuts into the jar you intend to pickle them in, throw in a handful of salt, and fill the pot with rape vinegar ”

“ No one, I said, referring to the people who bought groceries, would buy their sugar and other truck in one store and then walk a block to buy their pickles in a pickle store. That would be just extra work for them.
“They will,” says he, sticking to his scheme, “if [2] we have better pickles to sell them than they can buy in the average grocery store.” ”

“ Legs of mutton are very good, cured in the same way as ham. Six pounds of salt, eight ounces of salt-petre, and five pints of molasses, will make pickle enough for one hundred weight. Small legs should be kept in pickle twelve or fifteen days; if large, four or five weeks are not too much. They should be hung up a day or two to dry, before they are smoked. Lay them in the oven, on crossed sticks, and make a fire at the entrance. Cobs, walnut-bark, or walnut-chips, are the best to use for smoking, on account of the sweet taste they give the meat. ”

“ Take the largest oysters you can get, pick them whole out of the shell, and take off the beards, wash them very well in their own pickle, so let the pickle settle, and clear it off, put it into a stew-pan, put to it two or three spoonfuls of white wine, and a little white wine vinegar; don't put in any water, for if there be not pickle enough of their own get a little cockle-pickle and put to it, a little Jamaica pepper, white pepper and mace, boil and skim them very well ”

“ Take the largest and oldest shoots of elder which put out in the middle of May; the middle stalks are the most tender and biggest, the small ones are not worth pickling; take off the outward peel or skin, and lay them in a strong brine of salt and water for one night; then dry them in a cloth, piece by piece. In the mean time make your pickle of half white wine and half beer vinegar; to each quart of pickle you must put an ounce of white or red pepper, an ounce of ginger sliced, a little mace, and a few corns of Jamaica pepper ”

“ The pickle made to preserve cucumbers, &c. is generally so strongly impregnated with garlic, mustard, and spice, &c. that the original flavour of the vegetables is quite overpowered; and if the eater shuts his eyes, his lingual nerves will be puzzled to inform him whether he is munching an onion or a cucumber, &c., and nothing can be more absurd, than to pickle plums, peaches, apricots, currants, grapes, &c. ”

“ If skins are to be kept some time they should, after a preliminary pickling, be put in new, fresh pickle and it should be occasionally tested with a salinometer and kept up to the original strength. Dirty and greasy pickle should be thrown away, but if clean and of low strength it can be brought up by adding new pickle of extra strength. It will do no hurt if more salt, even a saturated solution, is made of either of the foregoing. ”

“ The many kinds of sweet pickles that have become common within a few years are, we imagine, less liable to derange the stomach than such as are spiced highly, and prepared mainly with vinegar. The mixed pickles—piccalilli, Indian pickle, Bengal pickle or chutney, and the Chow Chow—are all fiery, and must require an uncommonly strong digestion to be eaten without injury. ”

“ Sour pickles are first prepared by soaking in a brine made of one pint of coarse salt to six quarts of water. Boil this, and pour it scalding hot over the pickle, cucumbers, green tomatoes, &c. Cucumbers may lie in this a week, or a month even, but must be soaked in cold water two days before using them. Other pickles lie only a month.
Sweet pickles are made from any fruit used in preserving, allowing three, or sometimes four, pounds of sugar to a quart of best cider vinegar, and boiling both together. ”

“ O’Mally,” then came thoughtfully, “if our factory [128] will be able to handle your entire crop. For you realize, of course, that our pickle line is somewhat of an experiment. And hence, at the start, it would be rash for us to go into it too heavily.”
“I was told, sor, that your new pickle line was a big success.”
“Of course; of course. We have nothing to complain of. But, still, we are not established in that branch. Far from it. So we must proceed with proper business caution.”
“Which, I take it, is to the p’int that ye hain’t wantin’ me whole crop.” ”

“ Not from any personal interest in pickles, though that will seem odd, and perhaps incredible, to my French friends, who seem to think that every Englishman must be a pickle-eater—just as we English used to think every Frenchman ate frogs. ”

“ Put all the articles intended for the yellow pickle in a pot, and pour on them boiling salt and water—let them stand forty-eight hours, take advantage of a clear hot day, press the water from the articles, and lay them to dry in full sunshine, on a table covered with a thick soft cloth, with the corners pinned securely, that they may not blow up over the things—the cloth absorbs the moisture; and by turning them frequently on a dry place, they become white, and receive the colour of the turmeric more readily—one day of clear sunshine is enough to prepare them for the first vinegar. ”

“ Lay your fish, cut in proper pieces, in oblong earthenware pots, and pour the pickle over them when it is scalding hot, not boiling. Next day fill up the pots with more liquor, and tie bladder over them. These will be fit for table in a week, but will be improved by keeping. If any water is put to the vinegar it will certainly spoil them for keeping long. ”

“ It is too prevalent a practice to make use of brass utensils to give pickles a fine colour. This pernicious custom is easily avoided by heating the liquor and keeping it in a proper degree of warmth before it is poured upon the pickle. ”

“ Do not let our medical friends feel too indignant if I recommend to these same women the manufacture of pickles. The use of pickles, like the use of wine, may be a questionable thing; but, like liquors, they are a large article of trade: and, if we must have them, why not have them made of wholesome fruit, in good cider-vinegar, with a touch of the grandmotherly seasoning that we all remember, rather than of stinted gherkins, soured by vitriol and greened by copper? ”

“ In the pickled state they are often sorted out before tanning. The pickling is usually a one-bath process in which vitriol and salt or else alum and salt are used, but sometimes all three substances. The skins may indeed be received in a pickled state. They may be depickled by paddling with salt and borax, bicarbonate, or basic alum solution. They may also be tanned without depickling if the composition of the pickle be allowed for in the first chroming liquor. A commonly used pickle consists of 3 per cent. aluminium sulphate and 9 per cent. ”