Betsy Challenge 8: East India Pickle

I have never really enjoyed the process of making jams or jellies. There were a couple autumns I went to town on my parents' crab apple tree and made crab apple jelly, but that lost its appeal quickly. So I knew I wasn't going to do a traditional fruit preserve for this challenge, and instead decided something I'd never done before - pickling.

I am generally too anxious for canning, so I knew I wanted to try one of those old pickle recipes that you can keep in the fridge and keep adding to, rather than sealing it up and storing it away. I also wanted a pickle recipe that didn't have to sit for weeks on end - I wanted quick results. And, straight vinegar is not my favorite scent, so I didn't want to have to cook a whole bunch of vinegar either. I know, I have a lot of requirements for pickles.

Enter the recipe for East India Pickle from our old pal Eliza Leslie, in her Directions for Cookery. Normally I would put up a screenshot of the recipe, but it's spread out over a few pages, so I'll just direct you to page 227. No cooking of vinegar? Check! Pickles ready within a month? Check! She even says that you can keep adding to the pickle, though I will caution you that I highly doubt her "go ahead and keep it for two years" directive - I'm going to figure on these being similar to refrigerator pickles with a shelf life of about three months.

The Challenge: In a Jam (or Jelly, or Preserve)

The Recipe: East India Pickle, from Directions for Cookery

The Date, Region: 1844, American (Philadelphia); a similar recipe with the same name exists in the White House Cookbook from the 1880s

How Did You Make It: First I created the vinegar pickle well ahead of time. I used white vinegar, mustard seeds, shallots, garlic, turmeric and ginger. I could not find long pepper besides ordering it online, so I used black peppercorns instead. This time I doubled the recipe, put it all into a gallon jug, and let it sit in a sunny place (the best I can get to "a warm place") for ten days.

Next, I processed the vegetables. I cut up a head of cauliflower, three bell peppers, three medium-sized carrots, a handful of pearl onions, a whole bunch of green beans and two small cucumbers. I threw in a handful of green grapes, because I had them on hand and I was intrigued by the idea. I put them in a brine and set them in a fridge for a week. (Do note that I let the vinegar and the veggies sit longer than Mrs. Leslie directs - life got busy.)

I took the vegetables out, drained them, and rinsed them with more vinegar. I divided them up into jars. For someone who has real difficulty with spatial reasoning, I actually had the perfect amout of vegetables to fit twelve pint jars. I then strained the vinegar over the vegetables. I was honestly surprised by how good it smelled - I'm not a huge fan of turmeric, but I smelled the mustard, garlic and ginger more than anything. I put the covers on, and stuck them in the fridge.

Time to Complete: Ten days for it all to sit. Processing the vegetables probably took an hour (thank you, mandolin slicer), prepping the vinegar took half an hour (mostly peeling/slicing shallots, garlic and ginger). Canning took about half an hour.

Total Cost: 'SPEEEENSIVE. I ended up with 12 pints of pickles, but the cost for all the spices and some of the more expensive ingredients like the pearl onions and the shallots, plus the cost of the jars, really added up.

How Successful Was It? TBD! I'm going to let them sit for a while before I taste test, obviously. They look and smell good, so I have high hopes?

How Accurate Is It? As usual, I did not have access to heirloom varieties. I also used white vinegar, because I like it better than cider vinegar, but cider vinegar may be more accurate and it would be worth trying with other kinds of vinegar to see the tastes. As mentioned, I also had issues finding long peppers.

Pictures!

The vinegar...look at all the mustard seed at the bottom!

Draining the veggies after soaking in brine

Veggies, ready to be vinegarized!

The finished product

Betsy - Challenge 6: Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables

This is going to be the least sexy, most convoluted challenge I have done.

I knew I wanted to do a recipe I hadn't done before, with seasonal foods that were maybe a bit unexpected. I am still enamored of the Prairie Farmer, and went back to it for a seasonal produce recipe. I found another recipe in Rae Eighmey's compilation for "corn and beans", so I went back and looked for the original recipe, based on her 1849 date.

I found nothing.

Please note that the Prairie Farmer has been digitized all over the place. Still I ran into dead ends everywhere. I'm not sure what happened, if Eighmey misquoted the date or if I just missed something, but the Prairie Farmer had no references that I could find to this dish. I finally found a mention in the Country Gentleman - a similar periodical that freely admitted to stealing from the Prairie Farmer - for "methods of cooking green corn", that alluded to the Eighmey-cited recipe with corn "mixed with butter beans, seasoned with butter, pepper and salt, makes succotash, a capital dish". So, I gave it a go.

Despite the fact that I'm writing and posting this just before the challenge ends, I actually cooked it before this challenge even began, and served it the day it started. So, this is likely the only time I will be early to finish a challenge.

The Challenge: Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables

The Recipe: Composite from The Prairie Kitchen by Rae Katherine Eighmey and "Methods of Cooking Green Corn" from The Country Gentleman

Date/Year and Region: Eighmey gives the date as 1849, The Country Gentleman was printed in 1854. The Prairie Farmer was located in the Midwest, while the Country Gentleman was printed in Albany, New York. Make of all that what you will.

How Did You Make It: It was really simple. I cut up the salt pork and cut the kernels off the corn cobs to reserve in the fridge. I boiled the cobs with the salt pork until the pork was falling apart. (As a side note, I may have trouble getting all sorts of interesting ingredients, but my grocery store carries salt pork in abundance. The joys of country living.)

I took out the cobs, and put in the corn and the lima beans. I cooked them until tender, then took them off the stove. The recipe was not clear as to whether or not the vegetables should be drained, but reading between the lines, it read as a recipe for a salad rather than a soup. So I drained off the water, then added butter, salt and pepper.

Time to Complete: Half an hour or so? I was doing other things while the cobs boiled.

Total Cost: The corn was $2 from a roadside stand, the salt pork was $1.50, the beans were given to me for free and the butter, salt and pepper were negligible. So, about $3.50, and with four cobs of corn and about 4 cups of lima beans, there was plenty of food - enough as a side dish for a table of six, for sure.

How Successful Was It? It was...corn and beans and salt pork with butter. Tasty and fresh, not necessarily innovative, but simple and inexpensive and good. And really, really easy.

How Accurate Is It?: As always, I have no idea if the types of corn and beans I used were around in the period but I highly suspect not. I also clearly had some tenuous recipes to work with, but the reference in the Country Gentleman to succotash is pretty clear so I felt confident that, while I maybe hadn't started from a clearly-documented recipe (IMPORTANT: CHECK ORIGINAL SOURCES), I had ended up with one through my research.


And here's a picture of the dish on our period picnic table...which had, in fact, been rained on. Don't worry, the corn and beans were covered and survived and were still quite delicious.