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To Pichle Young Cucumbers

A method for pickling young cucumbers using coarse sea salt, boiling vinegar, and vine leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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To Pichle Young Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the gherkins

  1. Spread young gherkins on dishes and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let them sit for a week.

  3. Drain the gherkins and place them in a jar.

Pickle and green

  1. Pour boiling vinegar over them.

  2. Set the jar near the fire and cover with vine leaves.

  3. 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.

  4. Repeat this process until the gherkins reach the desired color.

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

Young gherkins
Provide the crisp body that the salting and pickling process firms and colors.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the gherkins over a week, firming them and preparing them to take up vinegar.
Boiling vinegar
Acidifies the cucumbers, preserving them and setting their color during pickling.
Vine leaves
Covering the jar with leaves during heating helps hold warmth around the gherkins to aid greening.

The step that matters

Repeating the vinegar and leaf treatment until the color is right. Color depends on heat and acid acting on the gherkins' chlorophyll, so the green may develop slowly or dull. Checking and repeating the heated vinegar treatment until the desired shade is reached matters more than following a fixed count.

“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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