Pickles

Pickling in South Carolina has been a means of preserving vegetables, fruits, nuts, meat, and seafood in vinegar, usually with an admixture of spice. While Carolinians of German descent fermented cabbage in salt, making sauerkraut, the usual means of preserving items was acetic acid—malt vinegar, cider vinegar, wine vinegar, and cane sugar vinegar. Vinegar making took place on farms and plantations in the early 1800s, but over the course of the nineteenth century it declined as vinegar became one of the commodities purchased at the grocery store. At the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, R. M. Hughes’s Monograph Apple Vinegar from Louisville was the cook’s choice in South Carolina. Today Bragg Apple Cider Vinegar inspires the most admiration among serious picklers.