Two Week Sweet Pickles

⏱ 20340 mins 🍽 8 quarts 🏷 Canning

This is a historic canning recipe for sweet pickles, originally recorded in 1974. The method is a traditional two-week process involving a crock and multiple stages of brining and soaking. It requires patience and several boiling steps to produce eight quarts of preserved cucumbers with a spiced, sweet-and-sour syrup.

Two Week Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

  • 75 cucumbers
  • 1 gallon water
  • 1 pint salt
  • 1 tablespoon alum, powdered
  • 1 gallon water, boiling
  • 1 gallon water
  • 6 cups sugar
  • 3 pints vinegar
  • 1/2 teaspoon allspice, whole
  • 1/2 teaspoon clove, whole
  • 1 tablespoon mustard seeds
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 2 tablespoons celery seeds
  • 3 cups sugar

Method

  1. Combine 75 medium cucumbers with one gallon of water.
  2. Stir in one pint of kosher salt.
  3. Allow the mixture to stand for 1 week, ensuring all cucumbers remain submerged under a weighted plate.
  4. Remove the cucumbers and dissolve one tablespoon of powdered alum in one gallon of boiling water.
  5. Let the cucumbers soak in this alum solution for 24 hours.
  6. Drain the liquid and cover the cucumbers with one gallon of fresh, clean boiling water.
  7. Leave them to stand for another 24 hours.
  8. Take the cucumbers out, split them, and combine with six cups of sugar, three pints of vinegar, whole allspice, a cinnamon stick, celery seeds, mustard seeds, and cloves.
  9. Pour this hot mixture over the pickles and let it stand for 24 hours.
  10. Drain the syrup from the pickles and boil it for three consecutive mornings, adding one cup of sugar to the pickles each morning before returning the boiled syrup.
  11. For the next three mornings, boil the syrup and pour it back over the pickles without adding any more sugar.
  12. On the final morning, pack the pickles into jars, cover them with the boiling syrup, and seal the jars.

Nutrition (per serving)

Sodium28176800 mg

Recipe details

CategoryCanning
AuthorDienia B.