Is there an alternate timeline where my home country is known as the United States of the

Pickle-Dealer? It seems unlikely, but there’s an element of truth to this half-sour hypothetical.

Amerigo Vespucci did not discover the Americas, contrary to what the map-makers who named

the continents believed, but his given name did end up lending itself to the so-called

“new world.” And Ralph Waldo Emerson once called Vespucci “the pickle-dealer at Seville,”

a derisive label that may have stretched the truth a bit, but pointed towards a very real

part of the itinerant Italian’s biography.

Before traveling to the New World himself, Vespucci worked as a ship chandler—someone

who sold supplies to seafaring merchants and explorers. These supplies included foods like

meat, fish, and vegetables that had been pickled, which meant they would stay preserved beneath

a ship’s deck for months. Without pickling, expeditions had to rely on dried foods and

ingredients with naturally long shelf lives for sustenance. Much of the time, this limited

diet wasn’t enough to provide crewmembers the nutrition they needed for the journey

ahead. This made pickle sellers like Vespucci indispensable during the golden age of exploration.

Vespucci even supplied Christopher Columbus’s later voyages across the Atlantic with his

briny goods. So while he wasn’t the world’s most important explorer, Vespucci’s pickles

may have changed history by preventing untold bouts of scurvy.

And pickles weren’t just enjoyed by 15th century sailors. From ancient Mesopotamia

to New York deli counters, they’ve played a vital role in the global culinary scene.

But where do pickles come from? How did the cucumber become the standard-issue pickling

vegetable, here in the States? And what exactly is a pickle, anyway? And -- oo sorry, I tired

myself out a little asking questions that I’m going to answer later in the video, so,

let’s just get started.

Hi, I’m Justin Dodd. Welcome to Food History. The verb, “to pickle” means to preserve

something in a solution. That solution is often vinegar, which is, at its most basic,

made of water and acetic acid. Most bacteria can’t flourish in highly acidic environments,

so submerging a perishable food in vinegar helps create a sort of natural forcefield

against the microbes that cause spoilage.

Another common pickling solution is brine, a.k.a. salty water. The brining method also

relies on acid’s preserving properties, but the acid isn’t added by the pickle maker.

It’s introduced by bacteria via a process called fermentation. I’ve covered fermentation

in our episodes on chocolate and beer...and ramen...and ketchup.

Look it’s kind of a big deal.

In the case of pickles, lactobacillus bacteria consume carbohydrates and excrete lactic acid,

so if you leave a jar of vegetables in saltwater, those bacteria will eventually turn the briny

solution into an acidic one. Vegetables soaked in microbe excrement may sound unappetizing,

but these bacteria and the acid they produce are perfectly safe to eat. They’re even

beneficial. Lactic acid protects pickles from other, harmful organisms, while lactobacillus

bacteria can boost the health of your gut’s microbiome.

Pickles of all kinds were a hit with the ancient world. It’s thought that the Ancient Mesopotamians

were the first to enjoy some pickled dishes, and Herodotus noted the Ancient Egyptians

ate fish preserved with brine. Columella proclaimed that “the use of vinegar and hard brine

is very necessary they say, for the making of preserves.”

But when did cucumbers enter the briny equation? While loads of websites and books talk about

ancient Mediterranean peoples enjoying pickled cucumbers, according to a 2012 paper in the

Annals of Botany, it’s actually unclear when cucumbers arrived in the Mediterranean

region. There are definitely early accounts that use words that people have translated

as cucumber, but according to the paper the texts in question are describing something

more akin to snake melons (awesome band name, by the way). The evidence suggests it’s

not until the medieval era that Europeans were able to enjoy a cucumber pickle with

their sandwich, as cukes made their way to the West via two independent paths: “overland

from Persia into eastern and northern Europe,” before the Islamic conquests, and a later

diffusion into western and southern Europe, which the paper’s authors peg to a primarily

“maritime route from Persia or the Indian subcontinent into Andalusia” in the southern

part of present-day Spain.

As the centuries progressed, pickles continued to win famous fans. Queen Elizabeth I reportedly

enjoyed them, and William Shakespeare liked them enough to reference them numerous times

in his work. He even helped build a new idiom around the word when he had The Tempest’s

King Alonso ask the court jester Trinculo, “how camest thou in this pickle?” Merriam-Webster

speculates that the Bard may have been playing off a Dutch expression that translates to

something like “sit in the pickle." In any case, being “in a pickle” is now widely

understood to describe any difficult situation, and—as Benny “the Jet” Rodriguez taught

us—has a specific, related meaning in baseball, used when a runner is caught between two bases

and is at risk of being tagged out. What would we do without the Sandlot?

Scottish doctor James Lind discussed how pickles could fight scurvy, noting how the “Dutch

sailors are much less liable to the scurvy than the English, owing to this pickled vegetable

carried out to sea.” The pickled vegetable in question was cabbage. And Captain James

Cook was such a proponent of what he called Sour Krout that he gave his officers as much

as they wanted, knowing that the crew would eat it as soon as they saw the officers liked

it. Captain James Cook: pioneer in influencer marketing.

But not everyone was a fan. John Harvey Kellogg, who as we’ve previously discussed was deeply

concerned about eating food with any known flavor, felt pickles were one of the ‘stimulating

foods’ that needed to be avoided, lest you succumb to…well, just watch that other video

if you’re curious.

For most of pickling history, people have added spices and aromatics to their pickle

brines. Ingredients like garlic, mustard seeds, cinnamon, and cloves all add flavor to pickles,

but that’s not the only purpose they serve. These spices all have antimicrobial properties,

which could partially explain why they were added to pickle recipes in the first place.

Dill, perhaps the ingredient most closely associated with pickles today, is also antimicrobial.

The herb has been found in Ancient Egyptian tombs, but it was hugely popular in Ancient

Rome, where it spread alongside the Empire itself. Eventually, it found its way into

Eastern European cuisine—and into pickling solutions. Pickles were already an important

part of Eastern European diets: They provided a refreshing and nutritious contrast to the

heavy, often-bland foods that were available in colder months, and it was customary for

families to pickle barrels full of vegetables in the fall so they would have enough to last

them through winter. Dill became a common ingredient in pickle brines.

When large numbers of Ashkenazi Jews immigrated from Eastern Europe to New York in the 19th

and 20th centuries, they brought their pickle-making traditions with them. A classic kosher pickle

is made with cucumbers fermented in a salt brine and flavored with garlic, dill, and

spices. There are two main types of kosher pickles: crisp, bright-green half-sour pickles

and the duller green full-sours. The only difference between the two varieties is that

half-sours have a shorter fermentation time. “Kosher pickles,” by the way, aren’t

necessarily kosher. Early kosher pickles may have been made in accordance to Jewish law,

but today the word is used to describe any pickles made in the traditional New York style.

Initially, Jewish pickle-makers sold their products out of pushcarts to their immigrant

neighbors. When Jewish-owned delis began popping up around New York City, pickles were a natural

addition to plates of fatty lunch meat. And today, no matter where in the country you

are, dill pickles and sandwiches are a common pairing.

As pickles became more popular, American food companies hopped on the pickle-wagon. Heinz

started selling them in the 1800s, and at the 1893 World’s Fair, H.J. Heinz lured

visitors to his out-of-the-way booth by giving away free pickle pins. The promotion was so

successful that the company featured a pickle in its logo for more than a century.

Some people, who are weirdos, prefer bread and butter pickles. They’re made by adding

something sweet to the pickling brine, like brown sugar or sugar syrup, and they generally

omit the garlic that gives kosher pickles their distinctive flavor. But where does the

name “bread and butter” come from? Last time I checked there's no bread or butter in the jar.

Although that could be pretty good. Ehh no I thought about it for two more seconds it sounds terrible.

It turns out it’s a bit hard to pin down the origin of the unusual pickle name. Some

say it’s a holdover from the Great Depression, when families would eat simple sandwiches

of bread, butter, and pickles. People may have done that, but if you’re looking for

a written record, it seems that one of the first known uses of the term came when Omar

and Cora Fanning registered to trademark the logo of their product, “Fanning’s Bread

and Butter Pickles,” back in 1923. GFA Brands, which at one point owned the company that

came to be known as Mrs Fannings, suggested that the “bread and butter” label came

from a bartering system the Fannings once used. In this version of the story, the Fannings

traded their delicious pickled cukes for groceries, including bread and butter.

Heinz was the business to beat in the pickle industry until the 1970s. That’s when Vlasic

launched an ad campaign featuring a cartoon stork who delivered pickles instead of babies.

This briny bait-and-switch would’ve been horrifying in the hands of a young David Cronenberg,

but as an advertising approach it somehow worked, playing on the belief that women crave

pickles when they’re pregnant. At one point, Vlasic even adopted the slogan “the pickle

pregnant women crave.” And that’s only the tip of the strange spear of this pickle

marketing story. A 1973 newspaper reports an ad of a husband telling his wife, “Sweetie,

it’s time for your 4 o’clock pickle.” Big no comment from me on that one. Even the

stork angle was part of a bizarre extended Vlasic universe mythology wherein life had

been good for storks during the baby boom in the United States. Once the boom ended,

the stork had to find a new job, and wound up delivering Vlasic pickles. The 70s: still

just an overall wild moment in time.

I’ve spent a lot of this episode talking about pickled cucumbers, but I can’t wrap

things up without mentioning a few more notable pickles from around the world. In Korea, the

pickle of choice is Kimchi. Like pickle, the word kimchi describes both a process and a

food. Kimchied vegetables are traditionally salted, covered in a mixture of garlic, ginger,

chili peppers, and fish sauce, and pickled in lactic acid via fermentation. Traditionally

kimchi is made with cabbage, but any number of vegetables—including carrots, cucumbers,

and radishes—can all be kimchi. The food is an integral part of Korean cuisine, and

can be served with almost any meal. Some families even own dedicated kimchi fridges for storing

their mixtures in the ideal environment for fermentation.

But kimchi isn’t the only fermented cabbage out there. Sauerkraut is a staple of many

European cuisines. It’s cabbage that’s been preserved through lacto-fermentation,

but unlike Kimchi, it doesn’t contain any seafood or bold spices. The name means “sour

cabbage” in German, but the condiment might not have originated in Europe at all. Food

historian Joyce Toomre suggests it originated in China, and according to legend, laborers

building the Great Wall first made it by pickling shredded cabbage in rice wine. The dish allegedly

traveled West by way of the Mongolian army in the 13th century.

A jar of pickled eggs used to be a common sight in English pubs and American dive bars.

Preserved eggs and booze may seem like an odd pairing, but it actually makes perfect

sense from a nutritional standpoint. Eggs are high in cysteine, an amino acid that your

body uses to help keep your liver happy. That means bar patrons might have reached for a

pickled egg to go with their ale for the same reason you crave a bacon egg and cheese sandwich

when you’re hungover.

Another common non-vegetable pickle is pickled herring. In Poland and parts of Scandinavia,

eating the preserved fish at the stroke of midnight on new year’s is thought to boost

your good fortune in the year ahead. With the success all things pickled have had around

the world, I can buy it.

Our next episode is about the origins of various culinary terms. If you know a cool story behind

some jargon from the world of cooking and eating, drop it in the comments below for

a chance to be featured in that video. Until then, this is Pickle Justin, signing off.