Now that gardens are full of fresh vegetables it's time to prepare to can, pickle and preserve our crops.
Recipes based from Peterson's, 1864.
Cucumbers Preserved to Imitate Ginger
- Take small cucumbers, with the flowers and stalks on them, and some large ones gathered dry; put them into a stone jar, with salt and water enough to cover them
- Put cabbage leaves on the top to cover them close
- Set them in the chimney-corner for a fortnight [two weeks], until they are turned yellow;
- Drain the water away, and throw away the cabbage leaves, which will smell very strong, almost to putrefaction [almost like homemade saurkraut]
- Split the large ones [cucumbers], take out the seeds, put them in an earthen pipkin [A small earthenware (or metal) cooking pot.] over the fire, with weak salt and water
- Cover them close, and let them green [simmer] gently for ten hours, when they will look a little green, and are very clean
- Take them off the fire and drain them
- Put them into cold water, shifting them twice a day for two days
- Drain them, and dry them in a fine cloth
- Have ready a thin syrup, with a good deal of whole ginger boiled in it, and some lemon-peel
- When it is cold, pour it on the cucumber
- Boil up the syrup every day, for a fortnight, and when it is cold, pour it on as before
- Tie them down with a bladder, and a leather and a paper under it, and keep them in a cool, dry place
- A pint of water to a pound of sugar is a good proportion for the syrup.
To Preserve Rhubarb
- Cut, without peeling or splitting, six pounds of ordinary-sized rhubarb into pieces about an inch long
- Put with it the rind of a lemon, into the stewpan, in which must be about a tablespoonful of water, to keep it from burning
- Let it boil till tender
- With a strainer, take out the fruit, and add to the juice five pounds of sugar
- Boil this forty minutes
- Again put in the fruit and boil ten minutes.
Another Way To Preserve Rhubarb
- To six pounds of rhubarb, cut small, add four pounds and a half of sugar, either moist or lump, but the latter is preferable
- Squeeze the juice of two lemons, and the rind, shred very small; boil all together until it becomes a jelly. Sometimes it takes two hours to do it properly.
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