To Pickle Young Cucumbers
Ingredients
Directions
Salt
Spread young gherkins on dishes and sprinkle with coarse sea salt, then let them sit for a week.
Drain the gherkins and place them in a jar.
Pickle
Pour boiling vinegar over the gherkins.
Cover the jar with vine leaves and place it near the fire.
If the gherkins do not turn a good green, pour the vinegar into another jar, heat it until boiling, and pour it over the gherkins again, covering with fresh leaves.
Repeat until the desired color is achieved.
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
- Young gherkins
- Form the pickle itself; their firm flesh holds its crunch through salting and hot vinegar.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws water out of the gherkins, firming them and preparing them to take up the vinegar.
- Boiling vinegar
- Provides acidity that preserves the gherkins and gives the sharp pickled flavour.
- Vine leaves
- Covering the jar with leaves helps keep the gherkins green while they pickle.
The step that matters
Repeating the hot vinegar until the colour is right. Green colour in pickles depends on the acidic brine and heat, and gherkins that have turned olive or brown will not regain their green. Checking colour at each round and repeating the hot vinegar pour keeps the gherkins green.
“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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