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Pickled Ripe Olives

A method for pickling ripe olives using successive brine, lime, and lye solutions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Pickled Ripe Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Cover the olives with a brine made of 50 pounds of coarse sea salt and 100 gallons of water.

  2. Let the olives sit for 2 days.

  3. Make a solution with 20 pounds of unslacked lime, 20 pounds of coarse sea salt, and 100 gallons of water. Stir the solution until the lime is slacked.

  4. Let the solution settle. Draw off the clear liquid.

  5. Drain the first brine.

Lime and lye treatment

  1. Cover the olives with the lime solution.

  2. Let the olives sit for 2 days.

  3. Drain the lime solution.

  4. Cover the olives with a solution made of 6 pounds of lye, 20 pounds of coarse sea salt, and 100 gallons of water.

  5. Let the olives sit for 4 days.

  6. Drain the lye solution.

  7. Cover the olives again with the lime solution.

  8. Let the olives sit for 2 days.

  9. Drain the lime solution.

  10. Cover the olives with the lye solution.

  11. Let the olives sit for 2 days.

  12. Drain the lye solution.

Brine and cure

  1. Cover the olives with a brine made of 30 pounds of coarse sea salt and 100 gallons of water.

  2. Let the olives sit for 2 weeks.

  3. Drain the olives from the brine.

  4. Cover the olives with a brine made of 50 pounds of coarse sea salt and 100 gallons of water.

  5. Let the olives sit for 6 to 8 weeks.

  6. If the olives are still bitter, change the brine again.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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

Olives (in the method)
The fruit being cured; the long brine and lye soaks remove their bitterness.
Lye
Strongly alkaline; it breaks down the olives' bitter compounds during the lye soaks.
Unslacked lime
Forms an alkaline solution with water that also helps soften bitterness in the olives.
Coarse sea salt
Makes the brines salty enough to preserve the olives and draw out bitterness during curing.

The step that matters

Changing the lye and lime solutions in order. Lye is strongly caustic and must be fully drained and rinsed out in the right sequence. Skipping or shortening a soak can leave the olives bitter or harsh, and the long final brine then has to do more work.

“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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