Ah, the "achaar". So wrongly translated as "pickle".
In my village (Ganges plain, North India), making achaar was a significant seasonal community event. When mangoes were small, we used to wait for heavy winds during early monsoon. A lot of raw mangoes would fall on the ground, and the next day they would be sold at a much cheaper price.
There were two broad classes of mango varieties: one for eating ripe, and the other one for making achaar, which were usually very small, had large seeds, and were extremely sour when raw (and extremely sweet and full of fibers when ripe). The whole process would take a week or two: cutting raw mangoes, drying them, salting them, preparing masala, and putting them in a special jar.
The last process requires special hands if you wanted your pickle to last a few years. There were a few women who were experts in putting pickle in jar and were highly sought after. Whoever had pickle that could last at least two years in the village without growing fungus belonged to this group. Some members of this famous group were from lower castes, and obviously, they were not allowed to physically touch the pickle. Instead, they would supervise from a very close distance.
They would take a few pieces of mango mixed with masala and push them down the jar as hard as possible to remove all air. The slower and harder you push, the better. Once the jar was almost filled, it would be filled with mustard oil and crystal salt and then kept for at least 6 months. The older the pickle, the better it is! The achaar jar used to be the costliest pot in a house, usually a china pot.
My contribution to this was introducing potassium permanganate as an extra layer to fight fungus. It is still known as "achaar powder" in the village. Things are very different now. The moisture content in new brick-concrete houses is not as high as it used to be in traditionally made houses. And much better quality jars are available, especially the airtight ones. I don't think many people now push the achaar as hard as they used to.
This brings back memories of my childhood. I am from a coastal village in (northern) Andhra Pradesh, India.
We call it "పచ్చడి" (pachchadi) in Telugu. If it were to be made in a process usual to the rest of the state (or the country), it would not last longer due the village's close proximity to the sea.
So my aunt and grandmother would also add jaggery to the pickle, to stop it from developing fungus sooner and to give it a sweet taste along with sour and spicy taste mango pickles are known for. This addition would give the pickle a deeper colour.
I always preferred it over the regular mango pickle.
I love bellam Avakaya. And the ginger garlic varieties are to die for.
My uncle (60+ yo) is a true connoisseur though. He loves it so much and abhors the mass manufactured stuff that he actually gets small batches made in India and even sells it in the US where he lives.
I helped build a Shopify storefront for him at Avakaya.com
Pickle is definitely the right word. Achar is a Persian loan word in Hindi. There's no good reason to use that as a standard term when writing in English. Both pickle and achar would sound alien to my great-grandparents, who spoke neither English nor Hindi. They would use the term uppinakaayi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Asian_pickle
Achar is not a Persian loan word in Hindi. Just because it's similar to the Persian word doesn't mean it's a loan word. Ancient Persian (Avestan) and Sanskrit were extremely similar to each other (basically the same language). So there are many old concepts and ideas that have the same words in the two languages. Achar is one of them, it's possibly a much older word.
What is the Indo-Iranian etymology you are proposing?
There is no attested word "achaara" referring to a pickle in any Sanskrit dictionary I know of (I just checked several). The standard Sanskrit words for pickle have very clear analyses, i.e. avaleha ("licked down"). A similar analysis of "achaara" in Sanskrit would lead to a nonsense meaning of "not-moving".
Whereas, there is a clearly related Persian word "achaar" for a similarly preserved food, which apparently doesn't appear in any Indian texts prior to Mughal rule of South Asia.
Even if there were a shared Avestan/Sanskrit antecedent, many words that share a common ancestor in those languages got re-borrowed in their Persian form into Hindi during Mughal rule.
For example, the common Hindi word "garam", meaning hot, is a direct borrowing from Persian "garm". It replaced a related word for hot/heat from Sanskrit: "gharma" (the loss of original aspiration on the "g" is a feature of Persian). Both words share the same origin, but the Persian version is the one used across South Asia today.
Similarly, Hindi "chaador" meaning "blanket", is a Persian borrowing that also has a Sanskrit cognate "chhaadana" meaning "cover".
I am not proposing any etymology. Just wanted to point that achar is not a loan word from Persian. It's not even the primary word for pickle in Persian actually (achar also means pickle but it sounds very odd in Persian, not an everyday word for pickle). That's what ticked me off about OP's comment. Pickle in Farsi is Torshi, especially in the Farsi that Mughals spoke (central Asian dialects). Afghans still call pickles torshi and not achar. On the other hand, my Nepali friends call their traditional pickles achar, and they have near zero Perso-Arabic influence in their vocabulary. In summary, there is no evidence that achar was a word brought in by the Mughals.
I couldn't find the etymology for achar, but I found references to classical Persian (Avestan) and Proto-Indo-Iranian. Apparently Ayurveda mentions achar, so it's possible that at some point there was a distinction between medicinal pickles and popular everyday pickles.
Nobody knows of course, but to me it's likely that achar has ancient origins, possibly in old Indus Valley or Gangetic Plains. In either case, history of pickle in Indian subcontinent and words used to describe isn't as simple as a loan word.
> That's what ticked me off about OP's comment. Pickle in Farsi is Torshi, especially in the Farsi that Mughals spoke (central Asian dialects). Afghans still call pickles torshi and not achar.
Words shift usage all the time. Especially in multi-linguistic scenarios, adaptation of terms is very common. Also, loan words often preserve archaisms. You see this quite clearly in the use of archaic Sanskrit borrowings in languages like Tamil or Malayalam when the same word has been lost in Hindi.
> I couldn't find the etymology for achar, but I found references to classical Persian (Avestan) and Proto-Indo-Iranian. Apparently Ayurveda mentions achar, so it's possible that at some point there was a distinction between medicinal pickles and popular everyday pickles.
Please share the credible original date-attested Ayurveda text sources that unequivocally demonstrate the occurrence of that word prior to the influence of the later Persian language.
Avestan alone is insufficient evidence because despite its similarities to Sanskrit, still has many lexical differences, and the presence of a word in Avestan doesn't immediately imply it's presence in Sanskrit.
Also, The Sanskrit sources contemporary
with Avestan are in Vedic Sanskrit, which lacks that word.
Ayurveda texts are much younger, and are composed in Classical Sanskrit.
Also consider that borrowings occured even in ancient times (i.e. the word "kendra" meaning "center" is a direct borrowing from Greek into Sanskrit). Lateral transmission of vocabulary is as old as humanity.
> In either case, history of pickle in Indian subcontinent and words used to describe isn't as simple as a loan word.
I never questioned the history of the Indian food or the multitude of other words used in contemporary Indian languages. I'm only addressing the claim that the word "achaar" isn't a borrowing.
Yes, languages chage and all, but words rarely completely disappear. If achar was originally Persian, then it has completely disappeared from modern Persian, which is bizzare.
This is how you spell achar in Persian, اچار. Find me a dictionary that has an entry for this word. You'll find it in Urdu dictionaries (same spelling), but not Persian, even Afghani Persian, which is much closer to Urdu. You know why that is? It's because achar is NOT a modern Persian word. And by modern I mean last 1000 years or so. It couldn't have been a Persian loan word because there are absolutely no references to it in Persian, at least in the last 1000 years. There's no credible evidence at all to that claim. Just some blog articles and non-experts parroting the same claim with zero knowledge of Persian or even most Indian languages.
As to the real etymology. I don't know man, not easy to find. You can Google Ayurveda and achar, that's all I got. Can't find the original Ayurvedic sources either. You sound like you know some vedas and Sanskrit. Would be great if you can lookup what pickles are called in Ayurveda. In the modern lingo, Ayurvedic pickles are also called achar. And Ayurveda products usually keep their original naming. I don't know of any example where they prefer a colloquial word over an Ayurvedic word. So they calling it achar seems to me that the word predates Ayurveda.
You're right, I couldn't find references to achar in Vedic Sanskrit or Avestan. So it's probably not that old. Although, it could be that those texts didn't bother writing about everyday things like pickles. If those texts mention pickles, but use a different word than achar, then one can claim that pickle wasn't called achar.
Well there you go, so it seems there were records of the word's usage around 1820s. Nice job. I can tell you one thing though. In colloquial Persian, achar for pickle is not used. It sounds odd and usually signifies some relation with Indian style pickles
> I think "non-moving" in Sanskrit should be "achara", not "achaara", i.e. a short "a" sound, not a long one, for the second syllable.
Thanks for the correction. Yes, "achaara" is non moving. "achara" simply doesn't exist AFAICT, so my point stands that it's a Persian borrowing, not a Sanskrit derivative.
But you switched them around below in your reply, compared to what I said above:
>Yes, "achaara" is non moving. "achara" simply doesn't exist AFAICT, so my point stands that it's a Persian borrowing, not a Sanskrit derivative.
And regarding words that "don't exist": in Sanskrit, anyone can make up words, by combining other existing words, as I think (but am not sure) is the case in German. Both Sanskrit poets and prose writers often do, but literally anyone can, including you and me, as long as the rules for making words up are followed. I don't have a citation for this, but interested people can look it up somewhere.
> And regarding words that "don't exist": in Sanskrit, anyone can make up words, by combining other existing words, as I think (but am not sure) is the case in German.
You are thinking of compounds.
Compounds are words that are composed (sometimes in realtime) of two or more independent words.
There are several classes of these categorized by their function. English also has such compounds, how it depicts them differently in writing, so we're not used to thinking of them as such.
Nonetheless, the presence of the realtime compounding mechanism does not show that the Hindi word "achaar" was not borrowed from medieval Persian, unless it can somehow be attested at an earlier time in Sanskrit, which it hasn't been. Furthermore, a real-time made-up compound "achaar" wouldn't make any sense by any of the Sanskrit compounding rules.
>Compounds are words that are composed (sometimes in realtime) of two or more independent words.
The procedure (i.e., rules) for joining or combining multiple words into one larger word is collectively called sandhi in Sanskrit, IIRC.
There is also another related word and procedure that I forget right now.
I am not a linguist or a philologist or whatever the right term is, but one other way of generating new words is to add a prefix in front.
Like adding the prefix "a" (which implies negation) in front of a word, such as adding it front of "satya" (truth) to get "asatya" (falsehood / not truth).
There are other such prefixes in Sanskrit, such as "sa", "vi" and "pra", which are used, for example, in the words "savikalpa samadhi", "vijnana", and "prasiddha" or "pralaya", to name just a few.
Sanskrit is a very interesting language, to say the least ...
>any Sanskrit dictionary I know of (I just checked several)
What are those Sanskrit dictionaries you checked? I'm not saying you are wrong, I just want Sanskrit resources, since I know it some and am interested in it.
I grew up (British) with it called pickle, sure we also had pickled onions^ etc. which are quite different, but that doesn't mean it's wrongly translated - for one thing they've both been through the pickling process; for another (perhaps more importantly as a layman term) everyone understands it as pickle.
I don't know what they think would be a better translation (i.e. explicitly not just borrowing achar ourselves too) - salsa maybe? Seems weird to use a loan word from a completely different culture for a different preserve, and anyway I suspect Britain had achar before salsa.
(^Anyway you would never say 'pass the pickle' for pickled onions, maybe something like piccalilli, which is relatively achar like! Although I'm not sure how good an argument that is, it probably was colonially achar-inspired, heavily uses yellow mustard seed which I think isn't/wasn't cultivated here (for harvest of seeds for culinary use I mean).)
>My contribution to this was introducing potassium permanganate as an extra layer to fight fungus. It is still known as "achaar powder" in the village.
Did people end up eating potassium permanganate? I think that would be pretty toxic.
I hope not. It was meant to be sprinkled on the top after oil and salt has been added. Besides’ we didn’t know that it was toxic. I read about it in my chemistry book and it is available in a medical store.
I am more worried about people keeping insecticides in husked and unhusked rice. Trace amounts of insecticides is very common in grains here. I hope this improves soon since epigenetic changes due to insecticides are very significant.
Update: I looked at wiki after one more comment pointed out toxic nature of kmno4. It wasn’t purple in colour but white. I am definitely recalling the name wrong.
You might be thinking of potassium metabisulphite? [1]
Sounds like it's a white powder, which fits your description. Also, I grew up in India, and am pretty sure that at school, I read about this being introduced to complement traditional preservatives.
> Did people end up eating potassium permanganate? I think that would be pretty toxic.
It is definitely toxic and dangerous. Yet, we used a very light solution of it (I'm thinking <0.1%, a very light shade of purple) to cause vomit reflex.
> The last process requires special hands if you wanted your pickle to last a few years.
Is that some code word for hygiene? I seem to remember that the concept of hygiene for making achaar (and for other kitchen matters) was codified in religious practices in my family/community.
I have observed this personally in my extended family. My paternal grandmother has 3 daughters. GM and Daughter 1's pickles would last long and were delicious. Daughter 2 and 3's pickles would not be good and spoil.
But, the process, and I mean, like an industrial quality detailed process of pages and pages of notes and quantities, etc would be absolutely same.
My GM always said 2 & 3 dont have the 'hand' for a pickle.
Fun Memory : One of my grandmother most precious possessions was not gold or money, but a 40 year old aluminum tumbler, passed on to her by her mother-in-law, that was used to measure items for the pickle (x tumblers of mustard powder, Y tumblers of chilli powder..)
No it’s technique. There are two ways to pickle something - hot and cold. The hot method uses boiling liquid that sterilizes the container by itself but the cold method requires careful technique that keeps the container sterile until the food is loaded.
Hygiene matters but only incidentally, since it’s easier to keep one’s work area clean when they are clean.
It's very interesting though isn't it! These people were obviously skilled enough to make a clean environment for pickle to... pickle, but were seen as untouchable.
I would have thought that the juxtaposition was so obvious that the people who weren't 'untouchable' didn't really believe it, but went along with it because everyone else did, too.
I agree. There were (or still are) various levels of untouchables, but not everywhere, not same people, and not same level of strictness. For example women if some areas are considered untouchables when they have periods (same home, same family, daughters, wives, mothers). Then the financial status. Then caste, tribe. Or language. Or geography.
> It's very interesting though isn't it! These people were obviously skilled enough to make a clean environment for pickle to... pickle, but were seen as untouchable.
There are often whole systems of technicalities created to rationalize these contradictions.
Here's an even more striking example (priests using clay from the ground of the house of a prostitute to make an icon for a religious festival):
There are all kinds of these scenarios that happen when theoretical social hierarchy comes into practical contact with the lived reality of people in interdependent communities.
Now I read the Wikipedia article about it. It doesn’t look the same. I remember it being white in colour while kmno4 is purple. Definitely I am recalling the name wrong.
Raw sour mangoes, chopped to eighths, with the seed taken out. (hard shell covering the seed is fine, but there's a thin film that is inedible on it, take care to scrape it to prevent choking hazard later).
Mustard powder. Seeds freshly ground is better.
Red chilli powder
Salt.
Methi seeds. (fenugreek seeds. You can find at asian spice stores usually).
Gingelly oil.
The most simple and basic aavakaya (andhra pradesh style mango pickle with mustard) is as follows:
1 cup heaped mustard powder, one cup heaped chilli powder, one cup (not heaped) salt. A handful of fenugreek seeds. Mix evenly. Toss the mango pieces in this. Add a little gingelly oil to wet the mixtute and help the mixture stick a bit. Place into clean jar. Glass or ceramic, avoid metal. Add a generous amount of gingelly oil. You don't need to top the vessel or make a layer.
Wait 2 days,then mix the entire jar once with a strong, deep spatula (or a clean hand, but beware the spice and wash very very very well afterwards).
This will taste good from day 2. It's a very distinct taste from a matured pickle, and I always eat a little when it is fresh. It will slowly mature over 6 months to a year to its final preserved taste.
Takealittle of it to a smaller vessel for daily use. Do not leave a metal spoon in or use a metal container.
This can be experimented with as little as 2-3 mangoes. About half a cup of salt chilli and mustard should be enough for this.
Also, this is just the simple recipe. There's a lot that depends on ingredient selection which can not be summarised as easily. Clean ingredients and avoiding introducing additional moisture will ensure it will stay good for atleast a couple of months. Well made pickles last multiple years.
My father knew he had a year, or two at most, left. On a sunny day in May 2020, he bought green Kairi mangoes, pickled them, and passed on his recipe. He made three batches to last at least 5-7 years.
He passed away from NAFLD in 2021, but we have his memories and his handmade flavorful pickle.
Well, as Keanu said "I know that the ones who love us, will miss us."; he was a good man. Here is his recipe.
This is for a small batch (around 1 KG), you can scale this accordingly.
Ingredients:
1) Raw mangoes (Kairi): 5-6; washed, dried, and cut (retain skin, discard seed)
2) Mustard oil: 1 cup
3) Fenugreek (Methi), Fennel (Saunf), Mustard, Coriander seeds: 2 tbsp each, roasted and powdered
4) Asafoetida (Hing): 1/2 tsp
5) Salt: 3 tbsp (or to taste)
6) Kalonji: 2 tbsp
7) Turmeric: 1 tbsp
8) Red chili powder: 2 tbsp
Method:
1) Sterilise: Wash the jar and lid. Fill with water, boil for 5 minutes, then empty. Invert to dry.
2) Roast & Grind: Dry roast fenugreek, fennel, mustard, and coriander seeds. Let cool, then powder.
3) Mix: In a large bowl, combine mango pieces with spices, kalonji, chili powder, turmeric, asafoetida, and salt.
4) Oil: Heat mustard oil until it smokes, then cool to lukewarm.
5) Combine: Blend oil with the mango-spice mixture.
6) Store: Transfer the mixture to your sterilised jar. Ensure mangoes are submerged, adding more cooled oil if needed.
7) Ferment: Place the sealed jar in direct sunlight for a week.
8) Serve: Ready in a week. Always use a dry spoon for serving. Store at room temperature up to a year, ensuring no moisture enters.
These are long lasting, chilli powder filled, Mustard powder based goodness, that is tasty throughout the year, filling and an absolute delight.
There are so many fond memories of eating mango pickle with steaming hot rice, in the hot summers in my home.
In every Indian Home (at least in the south that I know about), you will find at least a couple of these pickles stocked all the time. Mango, Tomato, Tamarind are very famous.
Also, many westerners don't know about Powder delicacies, meant to be eaten with rice, dosas, idly, etc. I personally know atleast a dozen types of these powders.
> These are long lasting, chilli powder filled, Mustard powder based goodness, that is tasty throughout the year, filling and an absolute delight.
Achar right? 'Pickle' is exactly what I'd (white British) call it, and vice versa not be surprised when it was what I was given.
Maybe you're thinking of American 'dill pickle' (where the pickle stands for 'with pickled cucumber') but that's at best just one type, and it's only 'American idea' (rather than 'western') that the preserved cucumber itself is to be termed 'a pickle'.
It is true that most non-Indian/inspired pickles I can think of are whole (or large pieces of) vegetables in vinegar and not a lot else, which looks different I suppose but it's the same preservation method. Nimbu achar 'lime pickle' especially is about as common as mango aam ki chutney in Indian restaurants/takeaways in the UK.
A more significant difference, if you insist, between Indian and 'western' pickle would be the presence of oil. But pickle is the right term, and achar is not a stranger to our plates.
It's true that Americans call pickled cucumbers "pickles", they are far and away the most common kind, but we're aware of what pickling is, and have pickled eggs, pickled radish, pickled beets, and while we don't refer to sauerkraut as pickled cabbage (we call it, well, sauerkraut), we do know that's what it is.
We don't eat as much Branston pickle as Brits do, but it's available in most supermarkets.
I didn't mean to imply you don't, more that I'm aware of that ('a pickle') and can't speak with much certainty about what else is available.
My point was only supposed to be that I can't see what's wrong with 'pickle' as a translation. I don't think any Indian would hesitate to call picallili an achar at a glance (on tasting it they might find it unexpectedly mild, but certainly you can have mild achars).
Fair enough, when buying achar at an Indian grocery in the States, it's a crap shoot whether they'll call it e.g. "Mango achar" or "Mango pickle". Oil pickling isn't a part of traditional American food, granted, but pickle is a translation that gets used.
As a bit of a pickle enthusiast, I must object to the idea that it is "vegetables in vinegar and not a lot else".
I was looking at making various Japanese pickles last year and rice bran with miso is a very common dry pickling bed; salt pickles are far more common than vinegar pickles (the recipe book I looked at had about ¼ of its pickles with some sort of vinegar, usually a rice vinegar).
Even vinegar-based Western pickles are far more interesting than "just vinegar", because most pickles have herbs and spices (pickled dill cucumbers have dill, garlic, and often mustard seed or coriander, sometimes chilli flakes). Also fairly common in Western pickles are wine pickles (not for cucumbers; sometimes used to finish the aging of sauerkraut) or salt pickles (preserved lemon, most sauerkrauts, the better pickled dill cucumbers).
And then you get the interesting pickles like Branston Pickle (more accurately called a chutney made with pickled vegetables, but…).
I also buy quite a few oil-pickled products from Italy; I suspect that many Mediterranean cultures use oil pickling over vinegar pickling. (Although the production methods for most of these would start with brining — salt pickling — they would be dried and the curing would be finished in the oil that they ship in.)
> As a bit of a pickle enthusiast, I must object to the idea that it is "vegetables in vinegar and not a lot else". I was looking at making various Japanese pickles [...]
To be clear I said 'most' and I meant only to be talking about what's prevalent in the UK, but I appreciate that wasn't clear in that paragraph (I only said 'non-Indian/inspired').
But anyway it was only to pander to 'sure you [the other commenter] might be thinking a pickle means a different looking thing', when my whole point was yes I agree it's a pickle, I'm absolutely not saying a pickle needs to be only vinegar and vegetable, or very liquidy, or really anything more strict than just that it be anaerobically fermented. (I'd far sooner/do exclude 'quick pickle', 'fridge pickle', et al. than achar!)
Since you mention 'oil-pickled products from Italy', a Delia-inspired favourite of mine is what she calls 'gardeners pickle' (pickles giardiniere) - the gist is roughly chopped vegetables (I think she includes mushrooms, fennel, onions, courgettes, aubergine, peppers, and tomato) in oil, vinegar, and salt. My frequently make it with just courgette and onion, perhaps plus cherry tomato - unfortunate bulk, with a piercing to allow the vinegar to penetrate they really are delicious! I eat it mostly on fresh bread with vintage cheddar (that's very mature, salty, I'm not sure it's available like that in the US - cheddar on the whole is not the same, and 'sharp' is not it) but it's also excellent as an addition to gazpacho - it's basically the same thing unblended after all.
famous | ˈfeɪməs |
adjective
1 known about by many people: a famous star | the country is famous for its natural beauty.
2 informal excellent: Galway stormed to a famous victory.
Various types of pickles are in fact "famous":
- Mango pickle (not my favourite Indian pickle; right now that would be garlic pickle and my standby is lime pickle)
- New York deli half-sour pickled cucumbers (not a vinegar pickle, but a fermented pickle).
- Umeboshi (salt-pickled Japanese plums)
- Kimchi (Korean fermented cabbage and vegetables)
- Kapusta / Sauerkraut (Ukrainian and German fermented/pickled cabbage, respectively)
There are others, but the point has been made. When you consider that "famous" is often used to mean "beloved", your ignorance is showing.
I make pickles like these, but I've never seen them that old. Generally we make them and eat them within several months, then make more. Mango pickle is my favorite as it has just the right spiciness, while lemon pickles are often too sour for my taste. If you want to try them, they are usually at your local Indian grocery store.
These pickles are mainly eaten with rice or dishes like dosas and idlis, often when you have nothing else at home to eat, as it provides a quick and cheap meal, combining carbs with some flavor as to not make them bland. They are also quite good in yogurt rice to provide some spice.
For anyone else looking to try Indian/Pakistani pickles. They are made of various fruits and veggies. Mango is the most popular one in Pakistan. Others include carrot, lemon, green pepper, onion and some other ones.
Pickle is dipped and preserved in oil. My family has made mango pickle at home many time over the years. Like GP it is eaten in span of months. It can be very sour. Here in UK, we have found Ahmad Foods pickles to be the best choice so far.
I have seen on TV that one of the favourite Indian meals is Paratha and Pickle. Is it a common meal?
> I have seen on TV that one of the favourite Indian meals is Paratha and Pickle. Is it a common meal?
It's certainly not uncommon, though I think it's often paired (for good reason) with yoghurt. It's more of a breakfast/snack meal than a full lunch meal though, however parathas & pickles can be components of a full meal too.
To add: if you are buying them from a store, you will need to try multiple brands before you find the one that’s right for you. Unlike western-style pickles, the taste can vary very wildly across brands.
My personal go-tos are Shan and Deep (I really like the Shan garlic pickle and the Deep lemon and lime pickles; they both make competent mixed achar). If I can’t find either of those, I will settle for Patak's over other brands I have not tried (there are some I have tried and Do Not Like).
Pataks aubergine pickle is great though. One of the simplest ways I like it is spread on wholemeal toast, and topped with hummus. Bringing India and the middle east together on some bread. Their green chili pickle is decent too.
Edit: I'd actually take those two Pataks versions over the Shan equivalent.
Patak’s will do in a pinch if there’s nothing else but I don’t like the smaller size of their jars and the lack of variety. I agree the Shan versions of those you cite are not particularly distinguished. They offer some unusual ones like lasora but for things like amla which are usually not pickled in Muslim community you are better off with another brand.
Pickles are the traditional sendoff items in India. During my university days, my grandmom and mom would painstakingly curate mangoes to make pickles. A handsome batch would accompany me to the hostel where friends and foes would flock together to consume it with much fervour. Those pickles certainly pulled a lot of slack for the mess food.
I came to the US a decade ago—-brought a carefully sealed plastic bag of mango pickles in my checked luggage.
It was “triple” packed because the oil will leak beyond the first layer!
As recent as last month—-my sister-in-law shipped a small plastic jar of fat red chilies pickle to Bangalore which I then brought it to San Francisco via a United flight :-)
our local store in the bay area has on and off supply of green mangoes. I do not know about the variety but it does the job. It is not as sour as the ones found in India.
For anyone who has had their appetite whet for Indian pickles, the book Midnight's Children has pickles as an important secondary plot point, and the vivid description of the pickles in that book have stayed with me for a long time.
Wow, 27 year old open pickle jars! I expected canned food but not like this.
I really should visit India before I grow too old. There's so much veggie food to try. Recently met a childhood friend who, apparently, used to live there for decade. No he has a small Indian restaurant serving food that is nothing like the places I have been to in Europe and the UK. No garlic, no onions (I like both), etc. Love it
The no garlic and no onion are part of a much broader practice to avoid root vegetables. Anything that grows below the ground is not consumed. Jains (the people who follow Jainism) mostly follow this (I say “mostly” because even though they’re supposed to, many may not).
Orthodox Hindus may also follow similar practices. Hindu festivals and rituals also avoid onion and garlic.
There’s a lot more to say than can be contained in a comment. You can read about Jain food and Sattvic food to know more.
No garlic and no onions are standard prescriptions for hindu priestly folk. Orthodox folks follow it religiously. Many these days follow it only in festivals and other holy days.
Also, like sibling comment says, jainism prescribes avoiding everything growing underground and you can ask for jain food if a place provides it. Some airlines make special affordances and have a jain meal option you can try.
Pickles almost always never look appetizing when photographed.
But they taste great when eaten with food. For most pickles the taste is not hard to appreciate. I would say pickles are not necessarily an acquired taste because they can be quite approachable !
The extremely high salt, vinegar, lemon, oil, chilly, sugar content or other preservatives allow them to be consumed much after their initial production. Most pickles tend to be consumed within a few months. Some afficianados like really really old pickles (like vintage wine) but they don't constitute the bulk of production/consumption.
Pickles in general also don't look like this at all, no one is eating 75 year old shriveled up pickles, lol. They are fresh and bright red and are eaten over a few months, not over decades.
One of the underrated achaar is Ber ka Achaar or pickled Indian Jujube[1]. It is a perfect spicy blend of sweet, salty, sour and heat. It smells mouth-watering too and is very delectable - you can gorge on them on their own. These days you'd hardly find people who can make it as good as I used to get back in 00's decade.
I’m one of those savages who can finish a bottle of Indian pickle in one go. Even if my teeth start hurting because of the acidity, I still keep going at it by sucking on them. Nothing like a hyper concentrated dose of sourness explosion in your mouth.
For the Non-Indians looking at the pictures and scratching their heads:
I want to clarify that the Indian concept of pickle is nothing like (say) the American concept (cucumber cut lengthwise, in vinegar, in a bottle, at the grocery store).
I don't know if there's a global equivalent to the Indian pickle. But the Indian pickle is a very-highly spiced, cured in oil concoction (primarily consisting of fruits and vegetables, with around 50% of the total mass being spices and oil). For the poor or rich alike it's a great thing to have. The poor because it adds a blast of flavor to otherwise bland carbs (rice / wheat). There were poor people in India (back when I lived there) who could afford nothing but plain rice as their meal. If they had pickle, it still made a tasty meal. I'm told that this sort of extreme poverty is now a thing of the past. I hope it's true.
> I don't know if there's a global equivalent to the Indian pickle
Most old-world cultures have a spiced, fermented foodstuff. Japan, China and Korea, for example, are full of them. Many ingredients in modern Indian pickles were originally imported from the North Africa of antiquity.
Even in America, the “classic” dill-pickled cucumber is a very small fraction of the fermented vegetable foods.
There are spiced pickles available in the western world (spiced olives in oil, as an example) - though it may not be as spicy or oily as Indian pickles. Kimchi is a distant but somewhat similar take. Indian pickles too are allowed to ferment a little at times (not the really old variety shown in the article). India also has its own version of American pickles (veggies deep-preserved in brine) - but they are usually not called pickles outside of supermarkets.
in the past the world did not have fridges and freezers. So anything that would spoil was made into pickles/aachar it had less to do with being poor and more with being able to preserve food for longer. Farms in the west make jams marmalade of fruits not because they are poor but so they they can use their crops in the future.
Tangerine skin in China/Canton area ( I believe ), used for different cuisines, it can be decade old as well, generally it seems to be more dried than packed with spices, it gives a delicious fragrance.
Don't know what they would be called in the west. I see 'preserves' often, but they seem to be closer relatives of jams than murabbas. Unlike jams, murabbas have a savory taste (much smaller than the overall sweet taste) element to them.
Probably somewhere between chutney and preserves. Its slang usage, definitely accentuate the kitchen-sink /lots of things thrown together element to it, (“choon choon ke murabbe” is an affectionate term of abuse you shout at misbehaving children, at least in North of subcontinent, roughly “naughty little rascal/scamp”)
My mom used to make a variety of achār (athāṇuṁ in Gujarati). Sour, sweet ones (made with unripe mangoes and they both had mustard & red pepper in oil), Chhundo (shredded unripe mangoes in sugar syrup & red pepper). These would be stored in white & light orange ceramic pots. But I don’t recall them lasting years and years! Lime as well as green pepper pickles were more seasonal. Also whole not quite ripe black peppers on their stem. The green pepper ones would get less hot over time but some could still be tongue burning hot.
People who want to make their own pickles should first try readymade ones as they can be a bit of an acquired taste. You can get many kinds in most Indian stores (usually a at least a whole shelfful if not a whole aisle). Patak’s used to be the main one many years ago but now there are many more brands. My favorite is Patak’s brinjal (eggplant) pickle. You can even use some pickles as a sandwich spread! Or on crackers or lightly sautéed chapati or masala puri etc as a quick snack.
My mind is blown. I always thought of pickling as a very microbial phenomenon:
“Probiotic pickles are a common myth, Krish said. “Probiotic means the presence of microbes. For a pickle to survive decades, it has to have zero microbes. When you pickle in salt or acids, all bacteria is killed,” he explained, adding that such pickles can be called postbiotic.”
I've seem some studies on salted pickles potentially being carcinogenic, specifically causing stomach cancer. This is due to pathogens, n-nitroso, or carcinogenic enzymes in the pickles. The most commonly cited one is kimchi. I don't think the science is final though, and I did see another study that claimed they were only dangerous for those with h. pylori infections, and another that the consumption needs to be high.
Anyone have a recipe for the lemon they would enjoy sharing?
I love pickle of all kinds, and my Meyers produce more fruit than I can handle, even sharing fresh lemons with friends. If I can also share some as preserves, that sounds like a fun way to continue the sharing.
Here's one that will make you long-lasting pickle. It involves an initial set of steps, a 6-7 day wait, and then another set of steps followed by another 6-7 day wait until you can eat them.
When I was in Hyderabad,India some of my colleagues got me to taste homemade chicken and shrimp pickles. They were so good. but also ver spicy. I couldn't find it anywhere in the US or any other wester countries.
Indian pickles are not same as American pickles. Totally different concept.
I come from the background where these pickles and many other things were passed down as family heirloom. It appears one of the china jars we used to store the pickle (raw mango) was from 1800s and one was from Spain.
My family primarily did mango pickles and the oldest one I consumed was around 20 years old. There were 100s of varieties of mangoes each very distinct but around 4 specifically bred of pickle. We used fenugreek and coconut oil as some of the ingredients. Each year we made pickle of around 100 tiny raw mangoes and stored for future and passed on some old pickle to the friends and relatives (never sold it).
I do not think in my region this was a big deal, most of the classic and wide variety of pickle seems to come from Rajasthan.
Few other food items that were passed down over generations:
1. A bottle of alcohol. (Only used for medicinal purposes) this was around 200 years old and purchased from a sailor from Portugal. It was an extremely powerful Cashew fruit distilled alchohol.
2. A very weird kind of gourd. This was fucking far too old. I mean older than my great grandmother and which she brought as dowry from her mother or something like that. I do no even know why and how it was preserved but it supposedly had some medicinal properties and people often came to my grandmother with offers to buy it. Eventually someone stole it.
You are right. Additionally, there are varieties of Indian pickles which use a similar technique as used in the US. In South India, some vegetables (for e.g., Indian gooseberry) are pickled in brine like the US does.
> A bottle of alcohol. (Only used for medicinal purposes) this was around 200 years old and purchased from a sailor from Portugal. It was an extremely powerful Cashew fruit distilled alcohol.
Sure at no time some curious teenager nipped that off and replaced it with some local tadi? I would have done that.
I had pickled lemon soda at a pho place once and while I can’t say I liked it I do have very compelling flashbacks and cravings for it… unfortunately that place closed.
Aging food in a pickling medium/paste for taste and/or preservation is quite common globally. Wikipedia as usual provides a nice overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickling
Not pickles, but if your family makes jam in Hungary, then it’s not unusual to have a few jars of decades old ones, made by a long dead relative.
We have a 20 year old plum jam we recently brought from the country house’s pantry.
True across Balkans. There are some fruits (e.g. apricots) which have a highly variable yield from year to year, so eating a 5+ year old jam (from a year with exceptionally high yield) is not strange.
In my village (Ganges plain, North India), making achaar was a significant seasonal community event. When mangoes were small, we used to wait for heavy winds during early monsoon. A lot of raw mangoes would fall on the ground, and the next day they would be sold at a much cheaper price.
There were two broad classes of mango varieties: one for eating ripe, and the other one for making achaar, which were usually very small, had large seeds, and were extremely sour when raw (and extremely sweet and full of fibers when ripe). The whole process would take a week or two: cutting raw mangoes, drying them, salting them, preparing masala, and putting them in a special jar.
The last process requires special hands if you wanted your pickle to last a few years. There were a few women who were experts in putting pickle in jar and were highly sought after. Whoever had pickle that could last at least two years in the village without growing fungus belonged to this group. Some members of this famous group were from lower castes, and obviously, they were not allowed to physically touch the pickle. Instead, they would supervise from a very close distance.
They would take a few pieces of mango mixed with masala and push them down the jar as hard as possible to remove all air. The slower and harder you push, the better. Once the jar was almost filled, it would be filled with mustard oil and crystal salt and then kept for at least 6 months. The older the pickle, the better it is! The achaar jar used to be the costliest pot in a house, usually a china pot.
My contribution to this was introducing potassium permanganate as an extra layer to fight fungus. It is still known as "achaar powder" in the village. Things are very different now. The moisture content in new brick-concrete houses is not as high as it used to be in traditionally made houses. And much better quality jars are available, especially the airtight ones. I don't think many people now push the achaar as hard as they used to.