What is Reddit's opinion of The Preservation Kitchen: The Craft of Making and Cooking with Pickles, Preserves, and Aigre-doux [A Cookbook]?

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Rinsing is not necessary. Sour and salty is the basic flavour profile of Western pickling. There are, of course, a wide range of preparations that are fairly neutral and even some on the sweeter side.

Since you seem to have quite a few basic questions about the role of pickling in Western cuisine, here is some additional perspective and context.

All food begins to spoil immediately after harvest. Spoilage, or the loss of quality, nutrients, edibility via decay, is caused by yeast, molds, and bacteria that exist in and around living things. Yeast and molds are fungi that feed on sugars (carbohydrates). Bacteria are microorganisms that feed on sugars, proteins, or other organic substances. After harvest, bacteria and fungi — many of which are harmful to humans — begin to break down the organic substances within foods.

The practice of food preservation is intended to deprive harmful microorganisms of a hospitable environment in which to grow, or to encourage the development of different microorganisms that conserve and add flavor to food.

The ability to preserve food is one of the most significant advances humankind has ever made. In ancient times, there were two main options for food storage: People had to eat their food quickly after it had been gathered, or find a way to delay spoilage so that the food may be used later, in case supplies grew lean or hunters grew few. Mankind survived for a period hunting, gathering, and consuming quickly.

There’s no way to definitively know what spurred the discovery of food preservation techniques, such as drying, salting, and pickling, but there is some historical evidence that points to simple necessity.

“In the past, the advances of civilisation [sic] have been closely linked with the alternation of food gluts and food famines,” writes historian C. Anne Wilson in Waste Not, Want Not: Food Preservation from Early Times to the Present Day (Edinburgh University Press, 1991). “Famines have always been unpredictable since they result from vagaries of the climate, but they have provided the imperative for the development of methods whereby surplus food could be preserved in the years of glut.”* The necessity of food preservation helped shape cultures (and their cuisines), agriculture, warfare, conquest, and widespread trade, to name just a few.

Preservation techniques were initially primitive: Air- or sun-drying meats, fruit, and grains is the world’s oldest form of food preservation. As people discovered salt and ash, they used it to assist in drying foods and discovered its potential for flavor and texture modification. According to the US National Center for Home Food Preservation, salting grew to be common, and people learned to develop flavors by using different salts, such as rock salt, sea salt, spiced salt, etc.

As we move into the Medieval time period, salt continued to be used as a popular food preservative, especially for long journeys between continents. In fact, salting was the most widely used method of preserving food during the Age of Sail. Large, long-term seafaring ships had stewards and cooks who were tasked with preserving and portioning rations for the crew, as well as any food items brought back from abroad.

Initially, pickling developed as a way to preserve precious crops to get through the lean seasons and as a buffer in case of famine or other disruptions in the food supply. As technology became more sophisticated and pickling became more widespread, more cuisines adopted it and made it their own. Today there is a massive variety in the space. Pickles are no longer simply a choice way of preserving, they are eaten for their flavour, texture, how they compliment other ingredients within a dish. So lots of reasons to eat them instead fresh vegetables.

In fact, one of my favourite restaurants in NYC is Jacob's Pickles- a southern style, comfort food menu. One of their most popular dishes is a hot fried chicken cutlet on a biscuit piled sky high with their signature pickles.

Some excellent written resources include The Preservation Kitchen: The Craft of Making and Cooking with Pickles, Preserves, and Aigre-doux and The Art of Fermentation.