Sweet Tomato Pickle.
To 8 pounds of tomatoes, when skinned and cut in pieces, add 4 pounds sugar. Boil slowly until thick, then add a scant quart of vinegar, 1 teaspoon each of ground mace, cloves and cinnamon, and boil slowly again until thick.
Watermelon Pickle (Sweet).
Pare the melon, cutting away all of red portion; cut in fancy shapes. Salt in weak salt and water over night. In the morning rinse in cold water; add lump of alum as big as a small egg to 1 gallon cold water. Put the melon in the cold water and after it comes to a boil, boil ten minutes. To 7 pounds melon, 1 quart cider vinegar, 2 ounces cassia buds or stick cinnamon, 1 ounce cloves, 3 pounds granulated sugar. Let this boil, then add fruit, cook until clear and you think it is done; seal up in jars and keep at least two weeks before using.
Oil Pickles.
100 small cucumbers, 3 pints small white onions. Slice all together and put layers of cucumbers and onions, with salt between. Let stand two hours, and drain off the brine; then add 1/4 cup each of white mustard seed, white pepper and celery seed, 2 cups olive oil, and alum size of a walnut, dissolved in vinegar. Cool with vinegar and put in jars.
Vermont Pickles (Cucumbers).
The first day make a brine strong enough to bear an egg, and pour boiling hot on the pickles; cover and let them stand twenty-four hours. The second day drain from the brine and make alum water boiling hot to cover them well, allowing a piece of alum the size of an egg to every hundred pickles. Cover tightly again for twenty-four hours. The third day drain from the alum water and cover with boiling hot vinegar, in which let them stand for one week. Then heat your vinegar boiling hot again, and add the following spices, etc., to every hundred: 1 tablespoonful cloves, 1 of coriander seed, 1 of ginger root, 2 of cinnamon, 2 of celery seed, 2 of mustard seed, 2 of whole pepper seed, 1 cup sugar, 1 of horse radish root, sliced fine. Put a layer of oak leaves in the bottom of your firkin, or jar, then a layer of pickles and spices, then leaves again, and so on until full, covering the top with the leaves, and pouring the boiling vinegar over all. They will be ready to use in two weeks, and will keep two years. The oak leaves are very essential for their astringent qualities.