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Pickles ?

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Don't know how far back they go but the oldest gardener in the Williamson Settlement I grew up in back in the '60's, Monk Stanton, used to make a type of mustard pickles. Man they were good, kind of a forerunner or contemporary of the dill pickle? I understand they go back to Germany and also the Pennsylvania Dutch senfgurken. I believe pickles go back to the Great wall of China, and should be pc enough for us! Ich lieber!
 
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(Left eye brow up) hmm.
I used to raise a big garden and make lots of jars of pickles each year. I grew a chiefly sized body over the years but on savory food. I’m not much of a sweet eater so I tended to dill and dill and jalapeño.
I’ve got the Tavern cook book of Williamsburg, and a big stack of Townsend’s calendars. I thought a pickle recipe would be easy to find... not so much.
Townsend has eggs and pearl onions. And I found cucc salads but not a pickled Cucc.
Cucumber was raised in ancient Egypt and popular in Rome. Lots of vinegar and lots of soaking stuff in salt and vinegar to keep was common.
But... everything I see on pickles is nineteenth century or later and most depression era.
 
I can't point to specific recipes but making sauerkraut, a lacto fermantation process, has been around for centuries. The same process was used for pickling other veggies. I wonder if the process was so common it didn't need to be mentioned in recipe books.

Jeff
 
Old cook books are short on detail, reading them one had to know the basics first to use the info. I would lean to your thinking that on average most people learned to pickle stuff as older children or young teens
 
The below "pickles" may be found in The Cook and Confectioner's Dictionary (1724) by John Nott

Artichoke
Asparagus
French Beans [string beans]
Codlins (small unripe apple)
Conger [eel]
Cucumbers
Elder [flower] Buds
Grapes
Hop-buds
Mallows
Mushrooms
Pigeon
Plums
Salmon
Trout
Turnep
Walnuts

I noted that they don't show pickled hard-boiled eggs, nor pickled peaches.

Fifty years later, in the 1774 edition of Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, there is an entire chapter on pickles,
Walnuts
Cucumbers
Gerkins
Asparagus
Peaches (there they are)
Radish
French Beans
Cauliflower
Beets
White Plums
Nectarines and Apricots
Onion
Lemons
Mushrooms
Codlings
Red Currants
Grapes
Fennel
Barberries
Cabbage
Pippins
Oysters, cockels, and mussels
Artichokes

LD
 
Love those Townsend cooking videos although I learned to avoid them when hungry. Be careful, they get addictive. The recent series on quill pens, ink, paper and posting letters was great.

LD: Thanks for the list of pickles covered in those cookbooks from the 18th century. I should order the Hannah Glasse book. Jon Townsend uses it for a lot of his videos. I have several of the books printed by Townsend and they are good quality paperbacks.

Jeff
 
I suspect the advent of canning has a lot to do with the number of recipes.

I like to experiment, so I took a large overgrown kohlrabi diced it up and pickled it like you would bread and butter pickles.
I tried them today, they were excellent.
 
I like to experiment, so I took a large overgrown kohlrabi diced it up and pickled it like you would bread and butter pickles. I tried them today, they were excellent.
You're slaying me, bro... :D
Can't find kohlrabi in my area, and I missed putting in a garden this year.
I do have a good supply of zucchini spears, pickled, and beet-eggs. I eat a lot of different pickles each week, and when I make them on my own I used cider vinegar as part of the pickle juice. Skeeters don't bother me..., part of that I think is the pickles.

LD
 
You're slaying me, bro... :D
Can't find kohlrabi in my area, and I missed putting in a garden this year.
I do have a good supply of zucchini spears, pickled, and beet-eggs. I eat a lot of different pickles each week, and when I make them on my own I used cider vinegar as part of the pickle juice. Skeeters don't bother me..., part of that I think is the pickles.

LD

I have 2 more the size of large muskmelons, they are definitely going to get pickled. They are awesome. I can give you a recipe if you want.

There might be some science behind vinegar repelling mosquitoes.
 
In 1699 John Evelyn wrote the book,
Acetaria A Discourse of Sallets
In it he writes:


" Cucumbers. Take the Gorkems, or smaller Cucumbers; put them into Rape-Vinegar, and boyl, and cover them so close, as none of the Vapour may issue forth; and also let them stand till the next day: Then boil them in fresh White-Wine Vinegar, with large Mace, Nutmeg, Ginger, white Pepper, and a little Salt, (according to discretion) straining the former Liquor from the Cucumbers; and so place them in a Jarr, or wide mouthed Glass, laying a litle Dill and Fennel between each Rank; and covering all with the fresh scalding-hot Pickle, keep all close, and repeat it daily, till you find them sufficiently green ."
 
From The Compleat Cook
Published in 1658

To Pickle Cucumbers.

Put them in an Earthen Vessel, lay first a Lay of Salt and Dill, then a Lay of Cucumbers, and so till they be all Layed, put in some Mace and whole pepper, and some Fennel-seed according to direction, then fill it up with Beer-Vinegar, and a clean board and a stone upon it to keepe them within the pickle, and so keep them close covered, and if the Vinegar is black, change them into fresh.
 
In 1610 the British herbalist John Gerard came out with an herbal in which he stated that the Capsicum peppers 'Killeth dogs'. I've eaten pickled jalapenos for years and when I moved from East Texas to the mountains here in Arkansas, I found the folks here hardly eat anything hot, and what they rejoice in 'Mexican' food is as bland as clabber.
 
Found that same thing, grew up in a largely Hispanic and Navajo town and had spicy food. My mother was from Rhode Island where there was a law against flavor in food, but my dad grew up in Wisconsin with a half German mother and neighbors were Poles Sweads and Norwegian.
He went right after Mexican food and enjoined strong flavors.
I moved to Arkansas and was greeted with very plain tasteless food.... but at least I could get spices and my dad made sure I leaned to cook as a kid.
 
Tenngun, Had to laugh about your mom and Rhode Island. Growing up there in the 1950s and 60s the food had plenty of flavor (usually involving coffee, inside RI humor) but I can't recall any hot spicy food at all. Things may have changed since then. I don't know if it's my childhood but I cannot tolerate hot peppers or any hot spices. Even Heinz ketchup makes me sweat. But I enjoy vinegars and lemons in amounts that make most people pucker for a week. Maybe all those New York style kosher dill pickles and Mediterannean pickled veggies I grew up eating (staying on topic) set me up. :D

Jeff
 
Well it was a tease as New England gave us fin and haddie, Boston baked beans and brown bread, annadama bread, and seafood the worst cook couldn’t screw up.
And most everyone has fond memories of moms home cooking, but God rest her soul, boiled potatoes was the upper limit of her cooking skill.
Luckily my dad was good and taught me and my brothers.we cooked most of the meals. I think my dad did it in self defense.
 
One of the pickle recipes I came across was for pickled radish pods,
Definitely going to try that next year.
 
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