EXTENSION COURSE IN VEGETABLE FOODS. 69 
HERB VINEGARS. 
Herb vinegars are useful for the housekeeper’s store closet, as by 
their means a new flavor is easily added to a salad sauce. They may 
be prepared either in Lesson X or here by steeping fresh or dried 
herbs, such as tarragon tops, in cold or hot vinegar. Some of the 
more delicate flavors may be lost by heating, but the cold process is 
slower. 
PICKLES AND SAUCES. 
The word “ pickle” is applied to the process of preserving foods, 
either with salt or vinegar, or both. Thus meats are pickled in brine, 
either a saturated solution of salt and water or the water which the 
dry salt draws out of the foods themselves, which are often three- 
quarters or more water. When the term is applied to vegetable 
foods it is commonly understood to mean preservation with vinegar, 
either with or without the addition of other materials, as salt, spices, 
or sugar. Insome cases, as in dill-pickle making, the acid is supplied 
by the fermentation of the product itself and not by adding vinegar. 
The number and variety of fruits and vegetables used in pickle mak- 
ing is almost endless, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, and green or un- 
ripe fruits being most common. 
An old household name for rede in a iieh the fiavor of vinegar 
predominates is “sour pickles.” ‘Those in which spices are particu- 
larly noticeable are frequently spoken of as “spiced pickles” 
“spiced fruits,” and those in which sugar predominates as “ sweet 
pickles.” 
The transition is gradual from the acid fruits preserved with 
sugar and spice to the sweet pickles where somewhat tasteless vege- 
table tissue has been filled with vinegar instead of natural fruit acid 
and spiced and sweetened. 
By using them for pickle making the thrifty housewives of earlier 
times contrived to make attractive most unpromising food materials 
as well as common fruits, etc., for instance, the rinds of the water- 
melon, the unripe windfalls from the fruit tree, martynias, cucum- 
bers, ripe tomatoes, artd the green tomatoes remaining when frost had 
killed the vines. Even young ears of corn 2 or 3 inches long are 
used for pickles. Though the kernels have already formed, the cobs 
are tender and will absorb the vinegar. 
Some materials are more satisfactory for pickle making if first 
soaked in salt water to extract acrid flavors. Special treatment of 
this sort is required with such materials as green melons, but with the 
more common fruits and vegetables used in pickle making there 
seems to be little difference in results, whether they are soaked over- 
night in that fashion or whether they are parboiled in salt water. 
