Olives, Preserving of
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the lye
Gather unripe olives.
Mix 1 part quicklime with 6 parts sifted ashes of young wood to create lye.
Soak and rinse
Soak olives in the lye for half a day.
Transfer olives to fresh water, changing the water every 24 hours.
Brine and store
After soaking, place olives in a brine made of dissolved coarse sea salt and water, adding aromatic herbs.
Store olives in brine for up to 12 months.
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 main food being preserved; its flesh is softened and made mild by the lye.
- Quicklime
- Reacts with the wood ash to form the alkaline lye that breaks down the olives' bitter compounds.
- Wood ash
- Supplies alkali that, mixed with quicklime, makes the lye used in soaking.
- Coarse sea salt
- Forms the brine that preserves the olives during long storage.
The step that matters
Rinsing in fresh water over the soaking period. Lye left in the olives makes them caustic and harsh. Changing the water regularly draws out residual alkali, and the olives must be soaked long enough for the lye to work through the flesh before brining.
“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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