Culinary Chemistry / The Scientific Principles of Cookery, with Concise Instructions for Preparing Good and Wholesome Pickles, Vinegar, Conserves, Fruit Jellies, Marmalades, and Various Other Alimentary Substances Employed in Domestic Economy, with Observations on the Chemical Constitution and Nutritive Qualities of Different Kinds of Food.

by Friedrich Christian Accum

PICKLED CUCUMBERS.

Perforate fresh gathered cucumbers, with a needle, or fork, put them into a stone jar, and pour over them boiling hot vinegar. Season with salt, pimento, long pepper, and ginger. These substances should be simmered with the vinegar for a few minutes.

To this pickle is sometimes intentionally given a lively green colour, by copper, and numerous fatal consequences are known to have ensued from the use of such a practice.[36]

[36] Treatise on the Adulteration of Food and Culinary Poisons, 1821.—“Poisonous Pickles.”

If pickled cucumber, or any other kind of vegetable pickle, be wanted of a lively green colour, it may readily be effected by soaking them when ready prepared, for a few minutes, first in tincture of turmeric, and then in a diluted solution of the colouring matter of indigo, dissolved in water.[37] This method of straining the pickle is perfectly harmless.

[37] This substance is called, at the colour-shops, intense (not liquid blue, which is quite a different preparation of Indigo,) blue.

Samphire, French beans, tomatoes, capsicum pods, nasturtium and raddish pods, may be pickled in the same manner.