Indian Pickle

Lay a pound of white ginger in water one night; then scrape, slice and lay it in salt in a pan till the other ingredients are ready.

Peel, slice and salt a pound of garlick three days, then put it in the sun to dry. Salt and dry long pepper in the same way.

Prepare various sorts of vegetables thus:

Quarter small white cabbages, salt them three days, squeeze, and set them in the sun to dry.

Cauliflowers cut in their branches; take off the green from radishes; cut celery in three-inch lengths; ditto young French beans whole, likewise the shoots of elder, which will look like bamboo. Apples and cucumbers, choose of the least seedy sort; cut them in slices, or quarters if not too large. All must be salted, drained, and dried in the sun, except the latter; over which you must pour boiling vinegar, and in twelve hours drain them, but no salt must be used.

Put the spice, garlick, a quarter of a pound of mustard-seed, and as much vinegar as you think enough for the quantity you are to pickle, into a large stone jar, and one ounce of turmeric, to be ready against the vegetables shall be dried. When they are ready, observe the following directions: Put some of them into a two quart stone jar, and pour over them one quart of boiling vinegar. Next day take out those vegetables; and when drained, put them into a large stock jar, and boiling the vinegar, pour it over some more of the vegetables, let them lie a night, and do as above. Thus proceed until you have cleansed each set from the dust which must inevitably fall on them by being so long in doing; then, to every gallon of vinegar put two ounces of flour of mustard, mixing, by degrees, with a little of it boiling hot. The whole of the vinegar should have been previously scalded, but set to be cool before it was put to the spice. Stop the jar tight.

This pickle will not be ready for a year; but you may make a small jar for eating in a fortnight, only by giving the cauliflower one scald in water, after salting and drying as above, but without the preparative vinegar; then pour the vinegar, that has the spice and garlick boiling-hot over. If at any time it be found that the vegetables have not swelled properly; boiling the pickle, and pouring it over them hot, will plump them.

From The American Domestic Cookery (1823) by A Lady (Maria Eliza Ketelby Rundell)

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Notes: This is a later edition of a book published in London in 1806 or 1807, and in Boston in 1807. A first edition may have been published in Baltimore in 1800. 

• The instructions are not as clear as they might be, especially the business of washing some dust off with boiling vinegar. I'm particularly unappreciative of recipes presented out of chronological order. Don't wait until the second-last paragraph to tell me I needed to scald the vinegar before I started.

• The decision as to whether the vegetables have “swelled properly” is left to the reader.

• This is of course a recipe for what we call piccalilli, originally referred to in 1758 by Hannah Glass as “Paco-Lilla, or India Pickle”. I don't think we would use cabbage nowadays, nor apples, though the other vegetables seem reasonable, and the mustard and turmeric seasoning is standard. Cabbage, as well as peppers, are commonly found in chow-chow, however, which according to Wikipedia is a distant cousin of piccalilli found in the Southern US.