Pickled Beets

7 beets.

2 pints (4 cups) vinegar 1/2 oz. whole ginger 1/2 oz. peppercorns.

1 bay leaf 1 blade mace 12 cloves.

Wash the beets carefully, taking care not to break the fibres, or they will bleed and lose their color. Boil them in plenty of boiling salted water for one and a half hours. Take them up, peel and cut them in slices an eighth of an inch thick, and put them into a stoneware jar. Boil one pint of the vinegar with the peppercorns, bay leaf, mace, cloves, ginger, and, when boiled for five minutes, add to it the other pint of cold vinegar. Strain over the beets in the jars; cover when cold.

Pickled Cherries

7 lbs. red cherries.

3 1/2 Ibs. sugar.

1/2 pint (1 cup) vinegar.

1 1/2 ozs. whole cloves 2 1/2 ozs. stick cinnamon.

Wipe the cherries, then stone and drain them. Tie the spices in a muslin bag and heat them with the vinegar.

When boiling, pour the vinegar over the cold cherries. Keep draining off and heating for four days.

Then heat all together in a casserole and seal.

Pickled Egg-Plant

Egg-plants.

Lemon.

Vinegar.

Sugar Mixed spices.

Peel egg-plants into inch thick slices and soak them in salted water for three hours. Drain and place in water, add a little lemon juice, and leave for three hours. Drain and pour over the slices some hot spiced vinegar, allowing one cupful of sugar and one and a half tablespoonfuls of mixed spices to one quart of vinegar.

Place the egg-plant slices in stoneware jars, bring the vinegar to boiling point, and add it. Cover and seal.

Pickled Onions

Small button onions.

Salt water.

1 quart (4 cups) vinegar.

2 blades mace.

2 bay leaves.

1 tablespoonful sugar.

1 teaspoonful salt.

1 teaspoonful allspices.

8 cloves.

1 teaspoonful peppercorns.

Take the onions, remove the outer skin with the fingers and the second skin with a silver knife, throw them into salt water, allowing them to remain for twenty-four hours. Then put them on the fire in an earthenware pan with fresh salt water and let them come to a boil. Remove from the fire, pour off the water, put the onions into a large stoneware jar, and pour over the hot vinegar, which has been previously scalded, with the spices. When spices are used, they should be put into a small cheese-cloth bag and thrown into the vinegar; this obviates the necessity of straining.

Pickled Oysters

200 large oysters.

1/2 pint (1 cup) vinegar.

1 pint (2 cups) white wine.

4 teaspoonfuls salt 1 teaspoonful white pepper 1/4 teaspoonful powdered mace.

Strain the liquor from the oysters, add to it the above ingredients, then put into an earthenware jar and allow to boil up. Pour while boiling hot over the oysters, and let them stand for a quarter of an hour; then pour the liquor off and let both oysters and liquor get cold.

Put the oysters into a jar, add the liquor, and cover tightly. They will keep for some time.