A pickle was a cucumber.
This is cucumber in a clump of cumbers
It all started somewhere in India 5,000 or more years ago.
There the first cucumber of all the cucumbers grew on its lowly vine.
A smallish greenish inconspicuous gourd, it formed on the string and ripened.
“What is it, Mommy?” the child asked.
“I don’t know,” the mother answered. “Let’s send it away.”
And . . . so they did.
The gourd began its journey from a cucumber to a pickle.
In the ancient Sumerian legend of King Gilgamesh, note is taken of citizens consuming cucumbers. The Roman historian, Pliny the Elder, observes that the ancient Greeks enjoyed growing cucumbers; and his own emperor, Tiberius, served hot-house-grown cucumbers to his guests summer or winter. (What the Emperor wants, the Emperor gets.) Charlemagne, the King of the Franks and later an emperor himself, insisted on cucumbers in his gardens during the end of the Eighth and beginning of the Ninth centuries (What the Emperor wants, the Emperor gets); and Columbus brought the green gourd along with him and the crew on their first visits the new world.
Or . . . was that a barrel of pickles?
Pickles travel better and farther than cucumbers because pickles are preserved cucumbers. Dipped in solutions of salt (sodium chloride) and/or vinegar (acetic acid) and often flavored with various spices (dill is a favorite of mine with a jalapeno or two for “kick”), the cucumber changes and becomes something entirely new. It becomes the pickle. In making the transition, the cucumber acquires the sour taste and crisp disposition that are so distinctly “pickle.”
No one knows for sure when the first person dropped a cucumber into that first briny solution, waited, pulled out what the cucumber had miraculously become, and crunched the first bite of a pickled cucumber. The long line of pickles had begun.
The pickle timeline suggests the first pickle appeared in Mesopotamia, modern Iraq, some 4,500 years ago. It hasn’t been the same since. Aristotle praised the healing effects of cured cucumbers. Julius Caesar fed pickles to his troops. Cleopatra attributed her good looks to pickles. Queen Elizabeth liked them, and Shakespeare wrote about them. James Mason designed and patented the first “Mason” jar to process pickles. Heinz, a new company, introduced the pickle pin at the Chicago World’s Fair. The Pickle Packers association was founded for workers in the pickling trades. (How fast can you pack a peck of pickled peppers?) The first annual Pickle Day was celebrated in New York City in 2001, and 5,200,000 pounds of pickles are consumed annually in the USA — nine pounds per person.
I have personally watched in wonder the cucumber in its glass jar of warm brine solution loose its bright green color. I have gazed wide-eyed as the bright green of the cucumber leached out like green threads into the solution and left behind the dulled but determined shape and color of the resilient and robust pickle. I have waited patiently for the pickles in their jars to age, grow to maturity and proclaim their readiness; and I have eagerly searched the pantry for that last jar from the farm.
Above and below, the dill has always been a trusted friend.
A new favorite to the table is the Kvasenaky dill. My first Kvasenaky hailed from the Czech farmlands to the south. I have since found them in hidden grocery coolers — they must be refrigerated. There is no vinegar in a Kvaseney — just salt, water and the big cucumbers that won’t fit into the regular jars. You need big jars, and the wait is shorter. Kvasenaky dills are done in days, and they are oh so good – for a big salty farm pickle.
Of course, to honor Old Dave and Ciddy, who introduced the hamburger to the world at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, we have the hamburger dill chip. No burger is at home without a generous helping of these chips.
There you have it.
From cucumber to pickle.
Over five millennia and crunching.
The world has long appreciated the green gourds,
And the pickles who rise from the briny waters to their glory!!!!
Grandpa Jim