From early childhood I fondly remember pickled beetroot, walnuts, cabbage, sliced tomato and onion, cucumber, dills and fish, and sometimes heard whispers of pickled exotica that to this day I’ve never tried – are pickled bird nests a thing?
All around the world, fresh foods are preserved for future eating by being placed in various salt+vinegar solutions, generally with spices added according to local taste. I picked up the wiki and found an extensive list of pickled foods, from which the most unlikely pickle candidate with absolutely no appeal to me, was ‘pickled gizzards’. I’d much prefer gizzards fresh and grilled on a Uruguayan parilla, thankyou, if I must eat them at all. But then I googled ‘pickled eyes’, and decided enough is enough. “Pickled Gizzards” it is.
On pickling foods, science suggests two things. First, it seems that eating pickled food is good for our gut. To use one current buzzword, ‘microbiome’, shows you’re keeping up with this very important and currently trendy area of human health and medical research. You can buy books, attend courses and consume particular foods and drinks to immerse yourself in a whole intestinal health thing. And I’m sure there is something to the notion that gut health has an effect on every system in the complex human body. It certainly does affect inflammations, and probably legions of other ailments, possibly including and not limited to dementias, dropsy, grippe, melancholy, bunions, ague, domestic malady, falling sickness, quinsy, vertigo, hay fever, ship fever and more. And, as you’d expect, some research suggests that pickled foods might be carcinogenic. Life is carcinogenic, though, and with variety being the key to survival, I’m not going to take a stand either way. Pope reminded us that “A little learning is a dang’rous thing; / Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring”, which seems fair enough to me.
So – for pickled gizzards and other delights, bon appetit mes amis!!