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.
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