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Cornichons, or French Cucumber Pickles

A historical recipe from Domestic French Cookery, 4th ed., by Sulpice Barué (1836).

A historical recipe

Domestic French Cookery, 4th ed., by Sulpice Barué (1836). Project Gutenberg eBook #34837.

From an old book: a historical recipe, not current advice. Its methods, additives and storage may be unsafe by today's standards. Its words name: preserving or pickling. Check current food-safety guidance before following this.

Source and licence

From Domestic French Cookery, 4th ed., by Sulpice Barué (1836). Digitised by Project Gutenberg, eBook #34837 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34837). Public domain in the USA; its status may differ elsewhere.

Read the original Public domain in the USA

What was changed: As printed, from the book's text; Project Gutenberg's header and licence removed. Ingredient lines were read out of the text by a program. A historical recipe, not current advice.

France. Associated with France by the book is about French cookery (Cooking, French); the recipe itself names no place (confidence 0.4). "Associated with" means only that the evidence named here links this recipe to that place. A recipe isn't labelled as representing an entire country because a source associates it with one, and regional origins are kept where the source gives them.

  • Preserving. Old preserving methods may not make food safe to keep. Use current tested guidance.

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Ingredients

Method

  1. Take ten pounds of very small cucumbers.
  2. Brush them all over to clean them well, and cut off the stems.
  3. Put them into an earthen pan with two handfuls of salt.
  4. Let them rest twenty-four hours, and then drain them.
  5. When they are well drained, put them back into the same pan, and pour in a quantity of boiling hot white wine vinegar, sufficient to cover them.
  6. Then cover the pan carefully with a lid or dish, and let the cucumbers set in the vinegar twenty-four hours.
  7. They will then be yellow.
  8. Pour the vinegar from them, and cover them with vine-leaves.
  9. Boil the vinegar again, and when it boils throw it over the cucumbers, stirring them well.
  10. When the vinegar is cold, pour it from the cucumbers, and boil it again.
  11. Then pour it over them, and proceed in this manner four or five times, till they become of a fine green.
  12. Keep them in the interval always covered with a layer of vine-leaves, fresh each time, and also with a cloth kept down by a large dish.
  13. This, by keeping in the steam, will assist them in greening.
  14. Then drain them on a sieve, and put them into glass jars.
  15. Afterwards, boil some fresh white wine vinegar, first mixing in it the following seasoning.
  16. To every quart of vinegar allow half an ounce of mace, half an ounce of sliced ginger, half an ounce of whole black pepper, six cloves, a few sprigs of tarragon, and half a clove of garlic.
  17. Boil the vinegar with these ingredients for five minutes, and then pour it hot on the pickles.
  18. Tie them up carefully.
  19. They may be used in a week.
  20. The generality of French pickles, are made in a manner similar to those of England and America.