Does anyone know exactly how this was prepared and what conditions were necessary for serving?
I do remember eating and enjoying it once. And never found it anywhere else.
Recall having had Watermelon Rind in the past - and it was not on the 20th Century Limited.
I suspect it was the outgrowth of the time when people used 'everything' as a food source.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
daveklepperDoes anyone know exactly how this was prepared and what conditions were necessary for serving?
If I remember correctly, at least one of the references for 'official' New York Central Lobster Newburg also contained the spice proportions for the watermelon pickle; it is certainly something that should be 'findable' somewhere. It might be as simple as cloves and a mix of cracked black and white peppercorns.
During that summerWhen unicorns were still possible;When the purpose of knees Was to be skinned;When shiny horse chestnuts (Hollowed out Fitted with straws Crammed with tobacco Stolen from butts In family ashtrays)Were puffed in green lizard silenceWhile straddling thick branchesFar above and awayFrom the softening effectsOf civilization;
During that summer--Which may never have been at all;But which has become more realThan the one that was--Watermelons ruled.
Thick imperial slices Melting frigidly on sun-parched tonguesDribbling from chins;Leaving the best part,The black bullet seeds,To be spit out in rapid fireAgainst the wallAgainst the windAgainst each other;
And when the ammunition was spent,There was always another bite:It was a summer of limitless bites,Of hungers quickly felt And quickly forgottenWith the next careless gorging.
The bites are fewer now.Each one is savored lingeringly,Swallowed reluctantly.
But in a jar put up by Felicity,The summer which maybe never wasHas been captured and preserved.And when we unscrew the lidAnd slice off a pieceAnd let it linger on our tongue:Unicorns become possible again.
John Tobias
Overmod, thanks for the wonderful "pickel poem," it sure evokes summer memories!
Thanks from me, also. Even if I decide the time and effort isn't productive enough, reading the Tobias poem made posting the question very worthwhile. Thanks.
My deceased wife made great pickled watermellon rinds. Since she went its been hard to find decent ones although some of the Amish ones are pretty close to what she made. Note: If you are ever in Amish country and visit their stores [not the non-Amish stores that serve them] you can find a lot of tasty pickled items from pickled watermellon rinds to lamb tongue.
Walmart sells it. No surprise there.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Pickled-Watermelon-Rinds-10-ounce/140923713?wmlspartner=wmtlabs&adid=22222222222116121651&wmlspartner=wmtlabs&wl0=e&wl1=o&wl2=c&wl3=74904319446016&wl4=pla-4578503881137164&wl5=&wl6=&wl7=&%20wl10=Walmart&wl12=140923713_10000000279&wl14=Pickled%20Watermelon%20Rind&veh=sem
Has any reader tried the Walmart product?
Also, for me to order it, via firends, without getting critifism, is the OU or K label on the can?
daveklepper... for me to order it, via friends, without getting criticism, is the OU or K label on the can?
The problem I see is that the 'kosher' market for this specialty may be so restricted that the company (I believe in Georgia) doesn't see the need to get Orthodox Union certification, provide the necessary oversight, etc. In that case you may have to make your pickle locally to ensure it is properly pareve.
Dave, In this recipe, I don't think any of the ingredients are not kosher.
https://www.watermelon.org/recipes/pickled-watermelon-rind/
Can Cinemon be substituted for sugar?
daveklepperCan Cinnamon be substituted for sugar?
No. Cinnamon is a spice, and although you could use 'cinnamon sugar' for some of the sweetener, the finely ground spice will get onto the pickled cubes and in the liquid and make them look muddy.
The sugar is part of the 'candying' process, and is progressively incorporated in the cellular structure of the rind through the careful steps of brined parboiling, soaking, and simmering that produce both the transparency and the pear-like texture together. If you are concerned with sugar uptake (as I am) you can substitute a number of sweeteners, including sucralose (Splenda) which are biologically less active but affect taste buds reasonably the same.
An important issue arises here. Let me preface this with a family tale.
One day in the early '70s, when my grandmother was staying with us, my father recollected how much he had loved a relative's molasses cookies. "Oh" my grandmother said, "I have some of her recipes and those cookies are there!" And so we got to work, interpreted the older language, and made a batch... but my father shook his head -- these weren't the cookies he remembered. So we tinkered with the recipe... but could never get what he remembered. Finally I figured out that what we needed were eight-year-old taste buds, not even recipe adjustments to 'simulate' them...
The only way to gauge the type and amount of spice in the New York Central version is to use someone who remembers the taste. There are a thousand varieties of spice, even before you get into the non-sweet variants -- and only a few will be right for even a Twentieth Century approximation. I have no objective idea what this is, any more than I could objectively know a Delmonico steak: it is horrifying that even such dramatically famous icons of cuisine could be irretrievably lost, or their provenance hopelessly corrupted, but you'd be astounded how much culturally-important context just disappears without recovery as new generations 'take over'. (See Captain Kangaroo as one example)
So Mr. Klepper needs to start by carefully remembering the nuances of taste and 'mouth feel' for the NYC watermelon pickle. After that we can start figuring out what might need to be adjusted for 81-year-old taste buds, but it's essential that we get the spices and relative amount of sugar right. (There is a whole lot more involving the vinegar and salt, but that's less amenable to objective historical research...)
David K: You might find this recipe useful. There's a lot of overlap in cuisines of Germans from Russia and Eastern European Jewish foods.
http://foodsoftheworld.activeboards.net/germans-from-russia-watermelon-rind-pickles_topic4553.html
Our tastebuds are constantly changing - I have had some things one day and thought that was fabulous - gone back to the same thing a day or a week later and thought -BLEAH! Sometimes the context of the overall experience sets the taste, sometimes other things are involved.
In the current day COVID-19 is said to affect the senses of taste and smell.
charlie hebdoDavid K: You might find this recipe useful. There's a lot of overlap in cuisines of Germans from Russia and Eastern European Jewish foods. Ye GODS that's a potload of sugar! Would that have been some historical sugar like beet sugar, rather than sucrose, with that accounting for the large amount needed? Is it an ethnic sweet-taste thing?
Ye GODS that's a potload of sugar! Would that have been some historical sugar like beet sugar, rather than sucrose, with that accounting for the large amount needed? Is it an ethnic sweet-taste thing?
Overmod charlie hebdo David K: You might find this recipe useful. There's a lot of overlap in cuisines of Germans from Russia and Eastern European Jewish foods. Ye GODS that's a potload of sugar! Would that have been some historical sugar like beet sugar, rather than sucrose, with that accounting for the large amount needed? Is it an ethnic sweet-taste thing?
charlie hebdo David K: You might find this recipe useful. There's a lot of overlap in cuisines of Germans from Russia and Eastern European Jewish foods. Ye GODS that's a potload of sugar! Would that have been some historical sugar like beet sugar, rather than sucrose, with that accounting for the large amount needed? Is it an ethnic sweet-taste thing?
Sugarbeet sugar is sucrose.
Johnny
I got fancy and stabbed myself. I had put 'white cane sugar' -- something I'd think would be expensive to use for pickle in the era charlie hebdo was mentioning -- but then went back to change it. As Fritz Lang said '... another of my damned touches.'
My experience, such as it is, with beet sugar is that it does not taste like white sugar. Probably that's an artifact of refining.
Cane sugar was very expensive, as it was imported. Beet sugar started to be used in Europe during the Napoleonic era because of blockades. By the mid-19th century, it was dominant.
Cane sugar has been grown in Louisiana for well over a century. A great uncle of mine oversaw the growing of cane on a plantation oustide Houma. Louisiana, for many years. In the thirties, he and the two other men running the plantation pioneered the introduction of a strain of Javanese cane which resisted the mosaic disease that had devastated the sugar cane industry.
You can read a fictionalized account of the introduction of this strain in Frances Parkinson Keyes' The River Road, which is set on a plantation south of Baton Rouge. Mrs. Keyes briefly describes the actual work done in introducing the Javanese cane at the beginning of the book.
DeggestyCane sugar has been grown in Louisiana for well over a century. A great uncle of mine oversaw the growing of cane on a plantation oustide Houma. Louisiana, for many years.
Once it was discovered how to granulate sugar efficiently with pan evaporation in the early 1800s, sugar cane took off in southern Louisiana. In the ten years before the Civil War, half of all American millionaires lived in a 50-mile stretch of the Mississippi between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
The 30 or 40 huge plantation houses along the river illustrate the large amounts of money sugar brought.
York1 John
Talk about sugar and money! When the French came in on the American side during the Revolutionary War British troops were withdrawn from New York to re-enforce the British colonies in the Caribbean, the British "Sugar Islands," to defend against any possible French invasions as the French were in the Caribbean as well.
There was more money being made from those sugar islands than there was from the rebelling Thirteen Colonies!
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Charlie, thanks! Yes
And July 4th is a Saturday this year. So I'll give both menues to the kind ladies that prepare my Friday evening and Saturday meals (as a guest at their tables) and let them choose between for a fine way to allow me to observe the Holiday.
My usual ways of Observing the Forth don't apply to Satuday, because they apply to every Saturday.
Flintlock76 Talk about sugar and money! When the French came in on the American side during the Revolutionary War British troops were withdrawn from New York to re-enforce the British colonies in the Caribbean, the British "Sugar Islands," to defend against any possible French invasions as the French were in the Caribbean as well. There was more money being made from those sugar islands than there was from the rebelling Thirteen Colonies!
The infamous triangular Rum Trade: West Indies shipped molasses to New England; it's converted to rum and shipped to Africa; slaves from Africa are shipped to the West Indies. This was a significant part of the economy in the 18th century.
A significant trade certainly, but not the only trade. There was quite a lively trade of colonial agricultural products such as wheat, rice, indigo, and of course tobacco. Timber was a high-demand product as well. Even American pig iron, which was very good quality. Agricultural products went out, English manufactured goods came back.
Needless to say a lot of that stopped cold when the war came, so that sugar trade had to be protected.
The total value of all the exports of the American colonies in 1770 was about 3 million pound sterling, while the value of British West Indies exports of rum, sugar and molasses was 4 million.
Saturday the 4th wasn't observed as I had panned. The famly that could implement the pickled watermelon rind menue is spending the holiday with children elsewhere.
So I observed the 4th in song, Simple Gifts plus a personal variation on America the Beautiful:
Oh beutiful for spacious skies, my Land beyond the seas.
Thine alebatster cities be undimned by Human Tears.
America, America, Confirm my Faith in Thee
Preserve Thy Good with Brotherhood, from Sea to Shining Sea.
Next year, also in Jerusalem, hope to in all honesty sing the regular verse.
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