Pickles --"Sailors'
salty provisions"
-- are mentioned
in Homer's 11th
Book of the
Odyssey.
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History of Pickling
Pickling is one of the oldest forms of food preservation.
It has been traced back to the dawn of civilization, 4500
years ago when people learned to preserve cucumbers by
pickling them in a salty brine.
Although India has given the world a large number of important
food and other crop plants, only four vegetables are among them.
One of these is the cucumber (Cucumis sativus). The others
are eggplant, Indian mustard, and cowpeas.
The English word "cucumber" comes from the Latin name cucumis.
The Bohemian agyrka, German Gurke, Greek aggouria, and our
word "gherkin," meaning a small cucumber pickle, all trace
back to an old Aryan word. Sometimes today we facetiously
refer to this vegetable as "cowcumber," not realizing that
English writers of 300 years ago called it "cowcumber"
in all seriousness.
The cucumber is believed native to the great Indian center
of plant origins, which lies between the northern part
of the Bay of Bengal and the towering Himalayas. It
has never been found wild anywhere, but species closely
related to it have been found wild in that region of India.
That the cucumber was carried westward from India long
before written history is indicated by the profusion
of ancient names for it in widely separated lands to
the west: Aryan, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Armenian, and
others. Contrary to often written claims, there is no
proof that the ancient Egyptians grew it.
In India, pickles date back to as early as the
Vedic period. In the treatises of Susruta and
Charaka, the use of condiments like salt, honey,
vinegar, tamarind, jaggery and asafoetida are
widely referred.
One old record claims that the cucumber was introduced
into China as "recently" as the second century B.C.
At the beginning of the Christian Era cucumbers were
grown in North Africa as well as in Italy, Greece,
Asia Minor, and the countries to the east. And
pickles are mentioned twice in the Bible.
(Numbers 11:5 and Isaiah 1:8)
Around 850 B.C., Aristotle praised the healing
effects of cured cucumbers.
Cleopatra, a devoted pickle fan, believed
pickles enhanced her beauty.
Historian Pliny's writings mention spiced
and preserved cucumbers.
The Romans used highly artificial methods
of growing the cucumber when necessary to have
it for the Emperor Tiberius out of season.
He is reported to have eaten cucumbers every
day in the year.
Caesar's soldiers ate vinegar pickles for
their healing effects.
Charlemagne had cucumbers grown in his
gardens in 9th-century France. They were
known in England in the early 1300's,
but the art of growing them was apparently
lost there as a result of a long period
of war and turmoil. Cucumbers were reintroduced
into England from the Continent some 250
years later.
In the 13th Century, pickles were served
as a main dish at the famous feast of King John.
Columbus brought the cucumber to the
New World, along with many other vegetables.
He had them planted in Haiti in 1494, and
possibly on other islands.
Reports of finding the Indians in Canada
growing cucumbers in 1535 seem hardly probable
so soon after Columbus, introduced them
into the West Indies. Some form of native
squash or gourd could have been mistaken for cucumber.
De Soto found the Indians of Florida growing
cucumbers "better than those of Spain" in 1539.
Explorers who touched Virginia in 1584
mentioned cucumbers. Presumably they
had been spread by Indians after
introduction by Spaniards far to the south.
They were grown in the first permanent
English settlements, in Virginia in 1609
and in Massachusetts in 1629.
Before the American Revolution the eastern
tribes of Indians as well as the colonists
were growing cucumbers generally. They were
grown in Brazil before 1650.
America's namesake, Amerigo Vespucci, hawked
pickles in Seville to seafaring ship captains
to help fight the sickness known as scurvy.
The process of canning for preserving foods
was invented by Nicolas Appert (1750-1841),
a French confectioner, who in 1810 received
an award for his process. He found that by
sealing foods in containers and applying heat
the food could be preserved. A large
percentage of our present-day vegetable and
fruit crop production is canned to provide a
consistent year-round supply.
In early colonial America, many foods were
imported from places such as the West Indies
and England. The lack of refrigeration at
that point in history made it imperative
that foods be preserved. Foods were
preserved by pickling, drying, canning, and
making into delicious jams.
Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson
and John Adams all had a strong affinity for pickles.
1926 - Best Maid Products was founded by Millie
and Jessie O. Dalton.
The U.S. government earmarked 40% of pickle
production during World War II for the army,
navy, and marines.
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