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Picking the Olives

This recipe describes a method for preparing olives by soaking in lye, washing, brining, and storing to reduce bitterness.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Picking the Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Debitter

  1. Soak olives in lye-water for 24 hours, ensuring the strength is correct.

  2. Transfer olives to water tanks.

  3. Wash olives thoroughly for several days to remove all lye.

Brine and store

  1. Prepare a 12-ounce brine.

  2. Pack the olives into barrels.

  3. Store the barrels for 6 months to allow bitterness to dissipate.

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
The fruit being treated; its bitter compounds are leached out and it is preserved by the brine.
Lye-water
Alkaline solution that breaks down the bitter compounds in the olives so they can be washed out.
Coarse sea salt
Forms the brine that preserves the olives and controls the fermentation during storage.

The step that matters

Washing out the lye. Olives must be washed repeatedly until no lye remains; residual lye leaves an unpleasant caustic taste and can harm the fruit, and the wash water needs changing to draw it out.

“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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