To Pickle Young Cucumbers
Ingredients
Directions
Salt
Spread young gherkins on dishes and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.
Let them sit for a week.
Drain the gherkins and place them in a jar.
Pickle
Pour boiling vinegar over them.
Cover the jar with vine leaves and set it near the fire.
If the gherkins do not turn a good green, pour the vinegar into another jar and heat it until boiling.
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 texture holds up to salting and hot vinegar.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws water out of the gherkins, firming them and preparing them to take up vinegar.
- Boiling vinegar
- Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle, and sets the flavour.
- Vine leaves
- Cover the jar and help hold heat and colour around the gherkins during pickling.
The step that matters
Repeating the hot vinegar until the green colour holds. Green colour in pickles depends on chlorophyll staying intact, which is lost in acid and heat if the vinegar is too hot or applied too long. Checking the colour after each pour and stopping when it is right avoids dull, olive-brown gherkins.
“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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