Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren vogelban here. The word pickle, aside from being
Speaker 1: delightful onto itself, is both a noun and a verb.
Speaker 1: To pickle is to preserve a food in an acidic solution.
Speaker 1: This a makes the food taste more sour and or puckery,
Speaker 1: and b makes it last longer. You can pickle any
Speaker 1: number of foods, but today we're talking about what probably
Speaker 1: comes to mind first for most Americans when you say pickle.
Speaker 1: A pickled cucumber, be it whole or in spears or slices.
Speaker 1: They're a staple on sandwiches and as a deli side
Speaker 1: or straight out of the jar. We're not judging the
Speaker 1: average American eats about nine pounds of them each year.
Speaker 1: But how did the pickle originate? And perhaps more importantly,
Speaker 1: how did the dill end up being a staple of
Speaker 1: the deli sandwich. Pickled cucumbers have been around for thousands
Speaker 1: of years, eating back as early as two thy four
Speaker 1: hundred BC or so, which is when cucumbers began spreading
Speaker 1: their way across Mesopotamia in order to preserve a crop,
Speaker 1: which if you've ever grown cucumbers, you'll know, tend to
Speaker 1: produce a lot of fruit all at once. People found
Speaker 1: that they could cover the cucumbers in a salt water brine,
Speaker 1: and a few weeks later the cucumbers would be tart
Speaker 1: and wouldn't spoil. Oh, what's going on here is that,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about before on the show, a bacteria
Speaker 1: live in the air and on surfaces all around us,
Speaker 1: and many of them are harmless or even helpful. So
Speaker 1: if you set out a loosely covered container of cucumbers
Speaker 1: in brine, the lactic acid bacteria that live everywhere will
Speaker 1: set up shop in the container. The salt solution draws
Speaker 1: out some of the sugars and the cucumbers. The bacteria
Speaker 1: eat the sugars and poop lactic acid. The lactic acid
Speaker 1: infuses the cucumbers, and after a few weeks you've got pickles.
Speaker 1: The acid both makes the pickles tasty and discourages other
Speaker 1: less friendly microbes from growing, and so the pickles don't
Speaker 1: go bad the way that fresh cucumbers would. The English
Speaker 1: term pickle likely originated from Germanic words meaning salt or brine.
Speaker 1: Anthropologists think that Cleopatra attributed the nutrients and pickles to
Speaker 1: her beauty, and that they were a favorite food of
Speaker 1: many notable figures throughout history, from Julius Caesar to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Speaker 1: By the age of exploration and colonization, many sailors brought
Speaker 1: pickles on their ships to help prevent scurvy on the
Speaker 1: high seas of The guy behind America's name, Amerigo Vespucci,
Speaker 1: was a pickle salesman and the supplier for a good
Speaker 1: chunk of the ships sailing at the time. During the
Speaker 1: Victorian era in England, pickles were a status symbol for
Speaker 1: the wealthy, as was the pickle caster, which was a
Speaker 1: piece of luxurious serving were used to hold pickled produce
Speaker 1: of pickling cucumbers was common among families of private gardens
Speaker 1: throughout the eighteen hundreds, and pickles were often an essential
Speaker 1: part of daily meals. The popularity of pickle casters grew
Speaker 1: between eighteen sixty and eighteen ninety, resulting in more intricate
Speaker 1: designs featuring flowers and gargoyles. Worked in ceramic or glass.
Speaker 1: They were often displayed proudly at the center of the
Speaker 1: dining table, but the pickles in those casters were mostly
Speaker 1: pickled at home until one H J. Hines. Yes that
Speaker 1: Hines introduced one of the first commercially produced pickles in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty and hit big at the eighteen ninety three
Speaker 1: World's Fair by giving away tiny pickle shaped pins. This
Speaker 1: was part of a marketing campaign Hines used to introduce
Speaker 1: the company's fifty seven varieties of pickles, preserves, and other
Speaker 1: jarred foods. It's still considered one of the most successful
Speaker 1: marketing campaigns in American history, and you can still get
Speaker 1: a pin through the Hinz History Center or sites like eBay.
Speaker 1: Other big names and pickles came along shortly before and after,
Speaker 1: including Klausen in eighteen seventy, mount Olive Pickles in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty six, and Lassic in nineteen forty two. But okay,
Speaker 1: why did the dill pickle spear end up being served
Speaker 1: with the deli sandwich? That practice started when Jewish immigrants
Speaker 1: began opening delis in New York City around the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: During the harsh winters of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
Speaker 1: the pickles had played a crucial role in staining Jewish
Speaker 1: communities in Eastern Europe. Eating pickles provided them with vital
Speaker 1: calories and a source of vitamin C. During the heightened
Speaker 1: antisemitism and deadly pogroms of the time, waves of immigrants
Speaker 1: fled to the UK and the US, and here many
Speaker 1: set up shop In New York, opening businesses like delis.
Speaker 1: Many offered dill pickles as palate cleansers to customers because
Speaker 1: the acidity from the pickle provides a sharp contrast to
Speaker 1: the fatty meats of the sandwiches, they also add nice crunch.
Speaker 1: Once the pickle became a popular side in New York,
Speaker 1: it caught on across the US because they're easy and
Speaker 1: inexpensive to prepare and tasty. Today, pickles are so common
Speaker 1: as a side item with sandwiches most restaurants and delies
Speaker 1: don't even list them on the menu. A pickling, of course,
Speaker 1: is not just limited to cucumbers, though you can also
Speaker 1: pickle fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, and eggs, anything you want really.
Speaker 1: A kimchi and sauerkraut are both made using the salt
Speaker 1: brine method, and brining isn't the only method of pickling.
Speaker 1: As a shortcut, you can cover your cucumbers and vinegar
Speaker 1: diluted with water instead of a brine. These are sometimes
Speaker 1: called quick pickles or refrigerator pickles. Vinegar is just a
Speaker 1: fruit or vegetable juice that's been fermented to produce alcohol
Speaker 1: and then expose to another type of acid producing bacteria
Speaker 1: which eat alcohol and poop acetic acid. So you're just
Speaker 1: buying your bacteria poop ready made when you pickle with vinegar.
Speaker 1: And of course you can add all kinds of seasonings
Speaker 1: to your pickles. A deli dill pickles usually involve a
Speaker 1: bit of white sugar, mustard seeds, and a hafty dose
Speaker 1: of dried and or fresh dill for a bright herbal pickle.
Speaker 1: Bread and butter pickles often have lots of white sugar,
Speaker 1: plus onions, garlic, celery seed, and something like turmeric to
Speaker 1: give them that yellow tint, yielding a sweet and sour
Speaker 1: pickle with a savory twist. But the possibilities are as
Speaker 1: endless as the pickles possible lifespan. The oldest known pickle
Speaker 1: was first pickled in eighteen seventy six and has been
Speaker 1: passed down from generation to generation. Today's episode is based
Speaker 1: on the article What's the dill? The History of the
Speaker 1: pickle on how stuffworks dot com, written by Murial Vega.
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Speaker 1: how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler klang A.
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