Pickle Green Olives
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Grade the olives and place them in tanks or casks.
Lye treatment
Cover the olives with a solution of 20 pounds of salt, 6 pounds of lye, and 100 gallons of water.
Let the olives sit in this solution for 4 days.
Drain the olives and cover them with a brine made of 25 pounds of salt and 100 gallons of water.
After 5 days, drain this brine and cover the olives with the lye solution again.
After 4 days, drain the second lye solution and cover the olives with a brine made of 25 pounds of salt and 100 gallons of water.
Brine curing
At the end of 6 days, drain this brine and cover the olives with a brine made of 30 pounds of salt and 100 gallons of water.
Let the olives sit in this brine for 12 to 15 days.
Finally, drain the olives and cover them with a brine made of 50 pounds of salt and 100 gallons of water.
After 5 weeks, the bitter flavor should be gone from the olives.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Lye
- Breaks down the olives' bitter compounds during the early soaking stages.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out bitterness and preserves the olives in the brine stages.
The step that matters
Changing the lye solution on schedule. Lye is strong and must be fully drained and replaced at the set intervals. Leaving it too long can soften the fruit, while stopping too early leaves bitterness behind.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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