Pickled Tink

I love Piccalilli and was very disappointed when Garners stopped producing theirs because I thought it was the best. I am convinced that people who say they hate piccalilli can only have tried one of the inferior insipid and acidic versions that masquerade as this fine pickle.

So I decided to make my own and started my quest for the perfect recipe, I have scoured my cookery books and trawled the internet and then I remembered Mrs Beeton's book of Household Management and there I found a recipe for Indian Pickle, maybe this is where Piccalilli originates from? I don't think I'll be following it, no doubt mine will be an amalgam of many but this one is a curiosity.

Indian Pickle (very superior)
The ingredients are:
To each gallon of vinegar allow 6 cloves of garlic, 12 shalots, 2 sticks of sliced horseradish, 1/4 lb of bruised ginger, 2 oz of whole black pepper, 1 oz of long pepper, 1 oz of allspice,  12 cloves, 1/4 oz of cayenne, 2 oz of mustard seed, 1/4 lb of mustard, 1 oz of turmeric, a white cabbage, cauliflowers, radish-pods, French beans, gherkins, small round pickling onions, nasturtiums, capsicums, chilies, &c.

Another curiosity I found whilst browsing Mrs B is a rhyming recipe for a salad, I love the way sauce has been rhymed with toss!

"Two large potatoes, pass'd through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give,
Of mordent mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites too soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault,
To add a double quantity of salt;
Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,
And twice with vinegar procured from 'town';
True flavour needs it, and your poet begs,
The pounded yellow of two well boiled eggs,
Let onion's atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, scarce suspected, animate the whole;
And, lastly, in the flavour'd compound toss
A magic spoonful of anchovy sauce.
Oh! great and glorious, and herbaceous treat,
'Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat,
Back to the world he'd turn his weary soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad-bowl."