Wipe the cucumbers clean with a coarse cloth, and put them into a jar. Take some vinegar, into which put pepper, ginger, cloves, and a handful of salt. Pour it boiling hot over the cucumbers, and smother them with a flannel: let them stand a fortnight; then take off the pickle, and boil it again. Pour it boiling on the cucumbers, and smother them as before. The pickle should be boiled in a bell-metal skillet. With two thousand cucumbers put into the pot about a pennyworth of Roman vitriol.
Large Cucumbers, Mango of.
Take a cucumber, cut out a slip from the side, taking out the seeds, but be careful to let as much of the meat remain as you can. Bruise mustard seed, a clove of garlic, some bits of horseradish, slices of ginger, and put in all these. Tie the piece on again, and make a pickle of vinegar, whole pepper, salt, mace, and cloves: boil it, and pour it on the mangoes, and continue this for nine days together. When cold, cover them down with leather.
Another.
Scrape out the core and seed, filling them with whole pepper, a clove of garlic, and other spice. Put them into salt and water, covered close up, for twenty-four hours; then drain and wipe them dry. Boil as much vinegar with spice as will cover them, and pour it on them scalding hot.
Cucumbers sliced.
Take cucumbers not full grown, slice them into a pewter dish; to twelve cucumbers put three or four onions sliced, and as you do them strew salt on them; cover them with a pewter dish, and let them stand twenty-four hours. Then take out the onions, strain the liquor from the cucumbers through a colander, and put them in a well glazed jar, with a pickle made of white wine vinegar, distilled in a cold still, with seasoning of mace, cloves, and pepper. The pickle must be poured boiling hot upon them, and then cover them down as close as possible. In four or five days take them out of the pickle, boil it, and pour it on as before, keeping the jar very close. Repeat this three times; cover the jar with a bladder, and leather over it; the cucumbers will keep the whole year, and be of a fine sea-green, but perhaps not of so fine colour when first you open them; they will become so, however, if the vinegar is really fine.
Cucumbers stuffed.
Take six or eight middling-sized cucumbers, the smoothest you can procure; pare them, cut a small piece off the end, and scoop out all the seeds; blanch them for three or four minutes in boiling water on the fire; then put them into cold water to make the forcemeat. Then take some veal off the leg, calf’s udder, fat bacon, and a piece of suet, and put it in boiling water about four minutes; take it out, and chop all together; put some parsley, small green onions, and shalots, all finely chopped, some salt, pepper, and nutmeg, sufficient for seasoning it, some crumbs of bread that have been steeped in cream, the whites of two eggs, and four yolks beaten well in a mortar. Stuff your cucumbers with this, and put the piece you cut off each upon it again. Lay at the bottom of your stewpan some thin slices of bacon, with the skin of the veal, onions in slices, parsley, thyme, some cloves; put your cucumbers in your stewpan, and cover them with bacon, &c., as at the bottom, and then add some strong broth, just sufficient to cover them. Set them over a slow fire covered, and let them stew slowly for an hour. Make some brown gravy of a good colour, and well tasted; and, when your cucumbers are stewed, take them out, drain them well from all grease, and put them in your brown gravy; it must not be thick. Set it over the stove for two minutes, and squeeze in the juice of a lemon.
To make brown gravy, put into your stewpan a quarter of a pound of butter; set it over the fire, and, when melted, put in a spoonful of flour, and keep stirring it till it is as brown as you wish, but be careful not to let it burn; put some good gravy to it, and let it boil some time, with parsley, onions, thyme, and spices, and then strain it to your cucumbers.