Musk-melons should be picked for mangoes, when they are green and
hard. They should be cut open after they have been in salt water ten
days, the inside scraped out clean, and filled with mustard-seed,
allspice, horseradish, small onions, &c., and sewed up again. Scalding
vinegar poured upon them.
When walnuts are so ripe that a pin will go into them easily, they are
ready for pickling. They should be soaked twelve days in very strong
cold salt and water, which has been boiled and skimmed. A quantity
of vinegar, enough to cover them well, should be boiled with whole
pepper, mustard-seed, small onions, or garlic, cloves, ginger, and
horseradish; this should not be poured upon them till it is cold. They
should be pickled a few months before they are eaten. To be kept close
covered; for the air softens them. The liquor is an excellent catsup
to be eaten on fish.
Put peppers into strong salt and water, until they become yellow;
then turn them green by keeping them in warm salt and water, shifting
them every two days. Then drain them, and pour scalding vinegar over
them. A bag of mustard-seed is an improvement. If there is mother in
vinegar, scald and strain it.
Cucumbers should be in weak brine three or four days after they are
picked; then they should be put in a tin or wooden pail of clean
water, and kept slightly warm in the kitchen corner for two or
three days. Then take as much vinegar as you think your pickle jar
will hold; scald it with pepper, allspice, mustard-seed, flag-root,
horseradish, &c., if you happen to have them; half of them will spice
the pickles very well. Throw in a bit of alum as big as a walnut;
this serves to make pickles hard. Skim the vinegar clean, and pour
it scalding hot upon the cucumbers. Brass vessels are not healthy
for preparing anything acid. Red cabbages need no other pickling than
scalding, spiced vinegar poured upon them, and suffered to remain
eight or ten days before you eat them. Some people think it improves
them to keep them in salt and water twenty-four hours before they are
pickled.
If you find your pickles soft and insipid, it is owing to the weakness
of the vinegar. Throw away the vinegar, (or keep it to clean your
brass kettles,) then cover your pickles with strong, scalding vinegar,
into which a little allspice, ginger, horseradish and alum have been
thrown. By no means omit a pretty large bit of alum. Pickles attended
to in this way, will keep for years, and be better and better every
year.
Some people prefer pickled nasturtion-seed to capers. They should
be kept several days after they are gathered, and then covered with
boiling vinegar, and bottled when cold. They are not fit to be eaten
for some months.
Martinoes are prepared in nearly the same way as other pickles. The
salt and water in which they are put, two or three days previous to
pickling, should be changed every day; because martinoes are very
apt to become soft. No spice should be used but allspice, cloves,
and cinnamon. The martinoes and the spice should be scalded _in_ the
vinegar, instead of pouring the vinegar _over_ the martinoes.