Snack on This at Your Weekend Barbecue: The Etymology of ‘Pickle’

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Snack on This at Your Weekend Barbecue: The Etymology of ‘Pickle’

In Word Through The Times, we trace how one word or phrase has changed throughout the history of the newspaper.

The summer of 2022 was “hot pickle summer.”

That is, according to Kim Severson, a New York Times reporter who covers food culture. Pickle seasoning was flavoring dips, chips, even pizza.

“We were crazy for the pickle flavor,” Ms. Severson said in an interview. We still are: Consider that Times Cooking offers recipes for a

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and

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.

The Times has been telling readers to pickle foods since 1861, Ms. Severson said.

A Times recipe for pickled eggs in 1861, which has one of the first appearances of the word “pickle” in the newspaper, was less inventive than recent concoctions but no less tasty. “With cold meat they are a most delicious and delicate pickle,” the article stated.

While pickling goes back thousands of years, the word “pickle” itself first appeared in English around the 15th century, according to the

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; it meant a spicy sauce served with meat. It soon referred to a salty or acidic liquid used to preserve food, usually fruits or vegetables. Eventually, the process of soaking food in the “pickle” was called “pickling,” and the product itself was a “pickle” or a “pickled” food.

“Pickle” comes from the Middle Dutch word pekel, meaning to ****** or pierce, the lexicographer Grant Barrett said in an interview. The spicy and salty flavor of the brine, he added, “pricks or pierces your *******, metaphorically.”

The colloquial phrase “in a pickle,” meaning in a predicament, was popularized in the 1600s after “

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” by William Shakespeare — but he had likely

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How the prevailing meaning of the phrase came to be is a bit of a mystery.

The lexicographer Kory Stamper said it may have stemmed from two earlier uses: In 1562, a poem by

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used “pickle” in a figurative sense for one of the first times, referring to the preservation of something other than food. And as early as 1561, a Dutch phrase that loosely translates to “sitting in the pickle” was used.

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it may have meant finding oneself in an embarrassing or disagreeable situation.

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The Times has reported on many pickles. One of the first came in 1860: Oyster dealers “were in a pickle,” fearing that “their stock of pickled bivalves would not hold out” through New Year’s Day.

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when caught between two bases — as did Mike Schmidt of the Philadelphia Phillies in 1975, The Times reported. (He escaped, and scored.)

In the ******* States, the pickled cucumber had claimed the “pickle” title by the early 1900s, according to Ms. Stamper. The kosher dill pickle was brought to New York by ******* immigrants from Eastern Europe, and the salty snack was soon

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in 2001 recounted a time when vendors sold “New York’s No. 1 nosh” from barrels in the street. And though pickle pushcarts might be a thing of the past, the pickle ******** a menu staple at ******* delicatessens.

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#Snack #Weekend #Barbecue #Etymology #Pickle

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