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Gherkin

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For the London building, see The Gherkin

Gherkin (French cornichon) is a young cucumber (Cucumis sativus), picked when 1 to 3 inches (3 to 8 cm) in length and pickled in jars or cans with vinegar (often flavoured with herbs, particularly dill; hence, ‘dill pickle’) or brine.

The term can also be used to refer to the West Indian Burr Gherkin (Cucumis anguria), a related plant species, originally West African, that was introduced to the West Indies, probably by the Portuguese. This ‘true’ or Burr Gherkin or badunga cannot interbreed with the ‘true’ cucumber (Cucumis sativus), which is the condiment vegetable now generally known as the gherkin or dill pickle. The West Indian Burr Gherkin is edible and may be pickled but must be picked when no longer than 1.5 inches (4 cm) long, since it becomes bitter and spiny if allowed to grow larger.

Etymology

The origin of the word may be Slavic or Greek, but it is likely to have entered the English language from early modern Dutch, in which the diminutive gurkkijn or agurkkijn denotes a small cucumber. (The word ‘pickle’ itself is derived from the Dutch pikel, a salt or acid preserving fluid.)

The fruit itself may have originated in India, but the ‘pickled gherkin’ was known, although not by that name, to the ancient Mesopotamians no later than the 3rd century BC and enjoyed in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The gherkin is mentioned in English in the seventeenth century, although the English diarist Samuel Pepys describes the ‘girkin’ in his entry for 1661-12-01 as ‘a rare thing’. Knowledge of the condiment may have been disseminated throughout Europe from the Middle East in the course of the Jewish Diaspora.

The gherkin may have been introduced to the American public by one Minton Collins of Richmond, Virginia, who was offering it for sale in the Virginia Gazette in 1792, although it might have been known in Colonial times under another name. It was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson. Pickling of gherkins was at first a domestic activity, but the jar of pickles became a commercial product in France as early as the 1820s. The condiment rapidly became generally popular, although always more so in the USA than among the British, for whom the generic ‘pickle’ remained the small, sweet onion.

Trivia

  • Running an electrical current through a gherkin will cause it to glow like a fluorescent light

See also

References

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