Fannie Farmer's Watermelon Pickle

Even though pickled watermelon rind is a quintessential American food, appearing in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy, The New York Times Heritage Cookbook does not have a recipe for it. Go figure. However, since a half watermelon had been lurking in our crisper since June 2, and both my husband and Laura, who lives in our basement, go nuts over pickled watermelon rind, I decided to put the rind to good use.
Canning seems to have increased in popularity among the younger foodies out there, so there should be an audience for this. As pickle recipes go, it is moderately time consuming. The rind needs to soak for three hours if you add lime water (more on this later) and all the cutting, peeling, and boiling takes about three more hours. It also requires a fairly substantial outlay of cash on canning equipment. You will need a canning kettle for the boiling water bath, equipped with a rack so the jars are not sitting on the bottom of the kettle, and jars, lids and rings. These things are now available at your local hardware store. If you make the expenditure, you will be able to enjoy canning vegetables, fruits, jams and pickles for the rest of your life.
I chose this particular recipe, among several out there, including one in the always popular Joy of Cooking, because it did not call for hard to find ingredients such as oil of cloves and oil of cinnamon. The Fannie Farmer Cookbooks were a staple in our house when I was growing up. My mother had the 1941 edition when she embarked upon her married life and actually had to learn how to cook. I used to pour over the menu section, drooling over such highlights of entertaining as the smorgasbord, the young children's party and the buffet. By the time I cleaned out my parents' house, 20 years after their deaths, the 1941 edition had virtually crumbled into oblivion. I did keep my sister's copy, the 1965 edition, its pages slightly singed from the time she fell asleep and burned up the cabinets in her New York apartment. This recipe comes from that cookbook.
Watermelon pickle is the original "Use it up, wear it out, make it last or do without," recipe in the spirit of the Depression. The cook is making use of a part of the fruit that would ordinarily be thrown away. I wanted to use up the half watermelon, but as I looked at it, and at the recipe, I decided that one half watermelon would not be enough. So, Thursday, after yoga, I found myself in the odd position of buying a food product so I would have enough material so as not to let leftovers go to waste. I lugged my new watermelon home on the bus, along with two pounds of sugar and two quarts of white vinegar.
After lunch, I started cutting, peeling and boiling. For some reason, this recipe, along with many others written before 2000 suggests that the cook boil the watermelon rind and then peel it. That always seems dumb to me. I find it easier to peel vegetables first, and then boil them. For one thing, it is easier to peel a cold vegetable than a hot vegetable. You need a good peeler to peel watermelons. The peel is tough. Remember to peel away from you. I forgot this elementary safety tip and took a hunk of skin the size of a navy bean off my left thumb. Blood began flowing everywhere. I wrapped my thumb up in a kitchen towel and went back to work. It was a moderately serious injury. By dinnertime, there was a collection of bloody towels worthy of Sweeny Todd lying at the foot of the basement stairs.

By four o'clock, I had cut up my left over watermelon and half a new watermelon, boiled it, cut what was left of the watermelon fruit off the rind, and put it to soak in lime water, or its modern equivalent. Last week, when I was looking into making watermelon pickle, but decided I wasn't up to canning, my husband Bob came back from the hardware store with a jar of something called Pickle Crisp Granules. This is the chemical calcium chloride. Lime is actually calcium oxide. The label on the jar of granules says it works three times faster than pickling lime. So, if I had read the directions, I would have had to soak the rind only one hour instead of three. But, I didn't read the directions. Pickle Crisp Granules are available at your hardware store, and possibly at your local supermarket if you live in an area that does a lot of canning. I don't expect much from my supermarket.
While the rind is soaking, make the pickling syrup. Fannie's quantities turned out not to be sufficient for an entire melon, so I am increasing the proportions by one-fourth. The result is spicy, not too sweet, and a beautiful, translucent gold. Bob pronounced the finished pickles up to standard.

Watermelon Pickle

Rind of one watermelon, about the size of a basketball

Pickling Syrup

5 cups white vinegar
1 1/4 cups water
5 cups sugar
1 tablespoon whole cloves
1 1/2 sticks of cinnamon
1 tablespoon allspice berries

Put all the ingredients of the syrup in a large saucepan and boil until the sugar dissolves. (About five minutes.)

1. Cut the watermelon in the traditional crescent shaped slices, remove the flesh of the melon, and peel the rind. Cut the rind into six inch pieces and boil it for five minutes. Scrape the remaining melon flesh off the rind, and cut the pieces into cubes.
2. Cover the cubes with water in which Pickle Crisp Granules have been dissolved and soak for one hour.
3. Meanwhile, make the pickling syrup, wash your jars and sterilize them and the lids and rings in the boiling water bath kettle.
4. Drain the melon rind, rinse it off, and cover with fresh water. Simmer until the melon rind is tender.
5. Drain off the water, and cover the melon rind with the pickling syrup. Simmer until the rind is clear (translucent, really) and the syrup thick, adding water if necessary.
Note: My rind became translucent after about 40 minutes of simmering, but the syrup did not thicken. I just went ahead and canned the pickles at that point.
6. Pack the hot pickles and syrup in the hot, sterilized jars. Put on the lids and rings, and submerge the filled jars in the boiling water bath. The pickles should stay in the boiling water for 15 minutes.
7. Lift the hot jars out of the boiling water bath with the rack and leave them to cool.
Makes seven pints.

Winchester Center Bread and Butter Pickles.

On Sunday, Bob and I loaded up the last of my ancestral crap into a U-Haul and drove back to Washington. My house is being sold to a young man who almost certainly cannot afford it. But, hey, at this point, it will be the bank's problem not mine. Now our house looks like a second hand furniture warehouse, although Bob is doing his best to put things up in the attic. I am dithering.
But, Wednesday, I popped out of bed early (early when you are retired is 7:15) and drove off through rush hour traffic to the Bethesda Women's Farm Market. It was time for pickling. The farm market is a remnant of the days when the fields that now hold McMansions were sown with corn, alfalfa, and orchards. There are three or four vegetable purveyors but the rest of the booths sell flowers, photographs, baked goods and Indian food.
The first booth right next to the door is run by a comfortable looking woman who had the most enormous cucumbers you have ever seen. Rather than checking out the other booths, I plunged right in and started loading my bag with these mini baseball bat sized creatures. I bought 12 of them. The recipe called for 25, and I was pretty sure that the author had smaller cucumbers in mind.  With Hewlett's usual lack of specific information, it did not say what size cucumbers. The recipe called for 8 "small" onions. If you remember, I believe that a small onion is about the size of a ping pong ball. Cucumber lady didn't have small onions. She had softball size onions, undoubtedly gotten from a wholesaler. I bought 4.
I got home with my bag of outsize bounty and started to look into the jar question. I have been canning for 35 years. Bob and I used to go out to Prince George's County on Labor Day to pick tomatoes which were then made into sauce and canned. When the children were little I canned massive amounts of apple sauce. So I have canning jars. Sort of.
Sort of means the shelves in the basement are filled with Mason jar boxes. Some of them are full of jars. Some of them are empty. Some of them are filled with bags of lids and rings. It depends on the size. In recent years I have mostly been making condiments and sauces that I canned in the smallest, jelly jar size. And, I gave them away. So in June, when I made apple blueberry conserve, I had to scour the shelves in the pantry for jars. But pint jars we had in plenty. I was able to come up with a full dozen wide mouth pints. I popped the jars into the dishwasher, in order to keep the number of scalds at a minimum. Hint. Canning jars do have to be sterilized, but the dishwasher does an excellent job.
Then, as Hurricane Isaac flapped the trousers of the newscasters in New Orleans and the Republican delegates to the convention flapped their jaws, I pickled. I finally got the last batch sealed and cooled  Thursday afternoon. It's a great feeling.
Since I believe that people want to know the origins of the names of these dishes, here's what I found.
Winchester Center. Connecticut is in Litchfield County. LItchfield County is, in parts even more tony than Berkshire County. The nearest town to Winchester Center is Winsted, a distinctly lower crust precinct of an otherwise elevated locale. Winsted featured prominently on the list of towns my mother hated, along with Golden's Bridge, New York. Winsted had had a flood in the 1950s which swept away half the town. Every time my mother drove through Winsted, on her way to West Hartford, where she used to go shopping, she would express a wish that the flood had swept away the whole thing.
Anyhow, Winchester Center might be very nice. Despite a childhood spent driving though the highways and byways of Litchfield County on my way to field hockey games, softball games and the very occasional birthday party, I never happened upon it. Wikapedia does say that Ralph Nader is from there, although Winsted usually claims him as a native son.
But at some point, a native daughter produced these pickles. Now you know where the pickles were produced, I can also tell you why they are called bread and butter pickles. Maybe. One Wikapedia answer is, that during the Depression they were as common on the table as bread and butter. Another answer, on ask.com is that they tasted like bread and butter.
I would go for Wikapedia, myself. They taste like sweet pickles, not bread and butter.
Now, hints for the new canner. If you really think you want to do this regularly, get the equipment. You need a ten gallon aluminum pot with a rack to put the jars in, a jar lifter, which you use to fish the rings, lids and jars out of boiling water, and a wide mouth funnel, which keeps cleanup to a minimum. Most of this stuff should be available in your local hardware store. But don't wait until October. Buy now.
About this recipe. It says clearly, heat until it comes to just below the boiling point. Otherwise, as I can attest, the cucumbers get mushy. I would advise buying the pickle size cucumbers which are available now in farmers' markets. If you use yellow onions which don't seem to come in pingpong ball size, use three to four of the larger ones.
I am not going to reproduce the Ball Corporation's instructions for canning. However, follow their directions. I think it is okay to cut corners by washing your jars in the dishwasher, but sterilize the rings and lids in boiling water. More complete directions are available from Ball on http://www.freshpreserving.com. There are many more home canning websites as well.

Winchester Center Bread and Butter Pickles

1 gallon cucumbers (about twenty-five pickling cucumbers)
8 small onions, chopped
1 green pepper, seeded and chopped
1/2 cup coarse salt
2 quarts ice cubes
4 cups sugar
3 1/2 cups cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 teaspoons turmeric
1 tablespoon celery seeds
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
2 tablespoons mustard seeds

1. Wash the cucumbers and slice thinly into a large (crockery)  bowl or crock. Add the onions, green pepper and salt. Mix. Top with the ice cubes. (They take the bitterness out of the cucumbers.)Let stand at room temperature eight  hours. Drain. Rinse lightly.
2. Combine the remaining ingredients in a kettle and add cucumber mixture.Heat, stirring to dissolve sugar, until mixture comes to just below the boiling point. Pack into hot sterilized jars. Seal. (Read the Ball Corporation's instructions on sealing the jars.) Cool. Store in cool, dry, dark place. Makes ten pints.