A Walk-through Pickle Times

A Walk-through Pickle Times

What Is Tangy, Crunchy and Oh So Spicy? Pickles of course! Let me take you to A Walk-through Pickle Times. Pickles are one of life’s most tantalizing foods; tangy, crunchy and of course really spicy. History’s legendary Queen Cleopatra to some extent attributed her beauty to a diet high in pickles.

Pickles have been around a lot longer for nearly 5,000 years; humans have been preserving and pickling since then. The etymology of the word “pickle” is a derivative of the Dutch pekel or northern German pókel. It means “salt” or “brine,” two chief components in the pickling process. The Hindi word “achar” comes from the Persian word “achar”. It means powdered or salted meat, pickles or fruits preserved in salt, vinegar, honey or syrup.

Taking a peek down the centuries, let us walk through the annals of the history of Pickles.

Circa 2030BCE

In India, pickles went beyond just preservation in brine. Ibn Battuta the legendary Moroccan traveller and writer chronicled the reign of Muhammad Bin Tughlak. He stated that there was mango and ginger pickle served with every meal. These heirlooms and the ancient recipes need to be passed on to the new generations.

Pickling Traditions

Like me, most of my generation reminisced about those delightful summer vacations when every household in the community was sniffing around for the aroma of homemade pickles. Making those mouthwatering, pickles for the entire family was an annual ritual. After sunning it, we opened the jar with a feeling of pride. Even when I recall my mom’s pickles, I can actually smell the aroma. Pickle-making is not an easy art. Not everyone can make tasty pickles. Just like plant lovers are born with a green thumb, pickle makers have magic in their hands. Reprimands awaited anyone touching the jar. Becoming the sous chef for my mom, I learned to cook under her tutelage. But sadly, I never made a pickle that lasted. But I crave the gobi achar she made every winter season.

Assortment of Pickles in India

We Punjabis eat achar with parathas, while south Indians, mix the pachadi, Uppinikayi, Urukai and Uppilitttuthu with rice. Central India has its own variations, Lonache in Marathi and Athanum in Gujarati. Serving pickles is a traditional custom with every meal, at home or at a festive occasion.

My grandmother would hide the jars and lock the cupboard. She would serve it with immense pride and love, as she knew it was delectable. My mom mastered the art under her tutelage and the tradition continued. Whenever we were travelling or going away to study, the jar of pickle was a reminder of home.

It is unbelievable but the origin of pickles in India dates back to 2030 BCE. Isn’t A Walk-through Pickle Times, interesting?

Gen Z in India

The pandemic was a game-changer in eating habits. When there was no means of getting fresh vegetables, pickles became popular. New cuisines are the trend along with fusion foods, but again Gen Z enjoys experimenting with new cuisines, but they seek traditional foods like pickles as it is comfort food. They may not have the time to pickle but consume it off the shelf.

A Walk-through Pickle Times- Internationally

Circa c. 2400 B.C.

Pickling; is one of the oldest methods of food preservation, conserving foods in vinegar or brine. Although the exact backgrounds are mysterious, archaeologists consider ancient Mesopotamians pickled food as far back as 2400 B.C. More than a few centuries later, cucumbers native to Indian soil, were being preserved in the Tigris Valley.

Circa c. 50 B.C.

When Queen Cleopatra of Egypt credited the pickles in her diet to her health and legendary beauty, her lover Julius Caesar and other Roman emperors believed pickles would make their troops strong and put them on a diet of pickles.

Circa A.D. 900

Around A.D. 900, Dill, which is one of the important herbs used in pickling cucumbers and other vegetables, it arrived in Western Europe from its native Sumatra. Though ancient Greeks and Romans used it comprehensively centuries before.

Circa 1492

On his legendary expedition to the New World, Christopher Columbus apparently rationed pickles to his sailors, going to such lengths that cucumbers grown in Haiti led to replenishing the rest of the trip. This was because during the Age of Exploration, when scurvy struck sailors on transoceanic, a horrible but common disease caused by the deficiency of Vitamin C. And that’s not all: Known as the “Pickle-Dealer,” Vespucci, worked as a ship’s chandler in Seville, Spain. He was a supplier of preserved meats and vegetables to ships and we know Vespucci aided in stocking Columbus’ ships on his later, less rewarding across the Atlantic.

Circa 1650’s

By 1659, cucumbers were being grown by Dutch farmers in New York. Merchants bought the cucumbers, pickled them to give them a longer shelf life and sold them out of barrels on the street. This was the beginning of what would become the world’s largest pickle industry. Later hordes of immigrants to New York in the late 19th and early 20th century which included great numbers of Eastern European Jews, launched kosher dill pickles in America; this made the city one centre of the pickle world.

A Walk-through Pickle Times

Circa 1809

Napoleon Bonaparte dangled a bait of 12000 francs to the person who could come up with the best way to pickle and preserve food for his troops. In 1809, Nicolas Appert, a French chef and confectioner, won the fat purse with a key understanding; if he filled food in a bottle and extracted all the air from it, before sealing it, he could boil the bottle and preserve its filling. Appert could pickle not only vegetables and fruits but jellies, syrups, soups and dairy products, using glass jars sealed with cork and wax,

Circa 1858

Early in the 1850s, the Scottish chemist James Young invented paraffin wax. This was a better seal for the jars used to preserve food. Lo-and-behold, in 1858, John Mason of Philadelphia patented the first Mason jar, crafted from a heavyweight glass that could endure high temperatures during the canning procedure. The ending of Mason’s patent was in 1879, which led to manufacturers of almost identical jars carrying on using the Mason name.

Circa 1893

At the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, with some tempting marketing abilities, “Pickle King” H.J. Heinz sent out a few local boys to lure fair-goers with a free gift if they stopped at Heinz’s out-of-the-way booth and tasted his products. By the closing time, Heinz had introduced one of the most popular marketing gambits in U.S. history by giving out around 1 million pickle pins or gifts. H. J. Heinz Company, Inc. repeated the same pickle pin promotion at the World’s Fairs of 1896, 1898 and 1939. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette states that Heinz’s dark-green pickle pins continue in manufacture even in the 21st century, linked by spin-offs like the ketchup pin and the golden pickle pin.

Circa 1940s

The U.S. government restricted pickles, and 40 per cent of the nation’s production of pickles was sent to the armed forces during World War II. The trade organization of Pickle Packers International, founded in 1893, launched International Pickle Week in 1948.

Circa 2000

Players from the Philadelphia Eagles notably credited their endurance to drinking pickle juice after beating the Dallas Cowboys 41-14 on a really hot day when temperatures reached 109˚. A study at Brigham Young University backed up this claim that drinking pickle juice relieved a cramp 45 per cent faster than drinking no fluids and 37 per cent faster than water.

We were eating pickles in BC and we are consuming them even now and I hope they will be there in the future. For this we should preserve the secret recipes passed on down the ages.

I believe that ‘’It’s the small trivial things in life that make a human happy, like opening a pickle jar.”

Do share your favourite pickles and their memories.

Check out these pickle Recipes

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Mullakada Pachadi

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This post was created for the Blogaberry Creative (Monthly) Challenge.

This blog post is part of the blog challenge ‘Blogaberry Dazzle’ hosted by Cindy D’Silva and Noor Anand Chawla in collaboration with Dr. Preeti Chauhan.