Search This Blog

Saturday 18 February 2017

Pickling

Pickling (preserving foods in salt/brine or vinegar) has been around for thousands of years, dating as far back as 2030 BC when cucumbers from their native India were pickled in the Tigris Valley.


The word "pickle" comes from the Dutch pekel or northern German pĆ³kel, meaning "salt" or "brine," two very important components in the pickling process.

The ancient Egyptians developed the process of pickling, using the food preservation technique on both fish and melons. The development of pickling ensured that the old cycle of plenty followed by shortage was finally broken.

H. J. Heinz Company began mass-marketing the first commercially manufactured pickle products to the American public in the late nineteenth century. In 1897 they opened a pickle factory in Holland, Michigan. It is the largest such facility in the world.

Production of the jarred pickled chutney Branston Pickle by Crosse & Blackwell began in the UK in 1920 in the village of Branston, Staffordshire. It is now mixed and bottled in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, using the same secret recipe and was voted one of the top 50 British brands of the 20th century.

The U.S. Government spent $277,000 on pickle research in 1993.

Pickles work as a palate cleanser by sweeping fat away from your taste buds allowing you to taste the food like it was your first bite.

Americans consume more than 2.5 billion pounds of pickles each year.


Americans eat approximately 20 billion pickles per annum.

The Christmas pickle is a supposedly German tradition, where you hide a pickle in the Christmas tree and whoever finds it first gets a reward. Apparently this is a well known tradition in the US, but not of German origin and in fact completely unknown in Germany.

China produced 73% of the world's pickles in 2010.

Korea is famous for its traditional food kimchi, which is spicy pickled Chinese cabbage.

In Mongolia, a traditional hangover cure is to eat a pickled sheep's eye in a glass of tomato juice.

A Vietnamese specialty is ruou ran, a rice wine with a pickled snake in it that is said to cure all illnesses.

A miniature pickle is called a cornichon.

If you apply an electric current to a pickle, it will glow in the dark.

Source Food for Thought by Ed Pearce

No comments:

Post a Comment