Skip to content

HOMEMAKING HANDBOOK

Historical wisdom for modern life

Recipe

1890s Bread and Butter Pickles

Sweet-sour cucumber chips with onion and turmeric: a late nineteenth-century relish for sandwiches and cold meat.

Pouring brine into a glass jar of sliced cucumbers for homemade pickles
Photo by Ananth Pai on Unsplash

Context

Bread-and-butter pickles sat on the table with cold meat and Sunday bread.

Turmeric gives the familiar yellow color; mustard seed and celery seed perfume the brine. For shelf storage, follow modern tested water-bath canning guidance. For refrigerator pickles, skip the canner and keep jars cold.

Ingredients

  • 2 lb pickling cucumbers, thinly sliced
  • 1 large onion, thinly sliced
  • 2 tbsp pickling or kosher salt
  • 1½ cups cider vinegar
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 tbsp mustard seed
  • 1 tsp celery seed
  • ½ tsp ground turmeric

Instructions

  1. Toss cucumbers and onion with salt. Cover with ice; rest 2 hours. Drain and rinse.
  2. Boil vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, celery seed, and turmeric until sugar dissolves.
  3. Add vegetables; return to a bare simmer for 5 minutes.
  4. Pack into clean jars with brine. For refrigerator pickles, cool and refrigerate up to 1 month. For pantry storage, process in a boiling-water bath using a current tested method.

Related in the Handbook