PICKLES AND THEIR MANUFACTURE...

Pickles in General and Prince's Pickles in Particular...  

One of the New Industries of Needham.

But seriously, the article goes on with this paean to the pickle for another two paragraphs ( "It may not be entirely out of order to quote poetry on the subject, since the foregoing quotation shows that poets sang of pickles so long ago that the author's name is gone from memory.") But then the editor does settle down to the real kernel of news - a pickle factory has opened in Needham!

In 1875, Mr. James Prince purchased 20 acres of farmland ( "remarkably well adapted for pickle raising") near what is now the Harris Avenue end of Prince Street (so now you know who Prince Street is named after). He built a 75 by 30-foot building to house his barrels and run his business. Making pickles is not complicated, but it requires a lot of space, time, and water. The cucumbers are brined in salt water in huge barrels for a couple of months, the rinsed and casked with vinegar and spices. Most of Mr. Prince's factory would have been storage for his casks, as the summer's harvest was processed and matured. He would also have needed casks of vinegar, as well as dry storage for his salt and for the spices that gave Prince's Pickles their unique flavor. Water would have come from one of the small ponds in the area, most likely the one that used to be called "Pickle Pond."

Not content with just cucumber pickles, Prince also sold large quantities of grated horseradish, as well as pickled beans, onions, peppers (like Peter Piper!), martinoes, mangoes, and cauliflower. Prince's pickled cauliflower, the Chronicle reported, was " of a very superior quality, being clear and white, instead of yellow as is generally the case." Mangoes, like many tropical fruits, were fairly new to the local market in the late 1800s; because they were so perishable, they were usually pickled for preservation. I have not a clue what "martinoes" are.

And unlike many food manufacturers in the late 19th century, Prince (the Chronicle assures us) did not use colorings or additives - "His pickles are also of a better grade than common, and he is very careful not to use verdigris of any other coloring matter in order to make them look green, but is quite content to let them rest on their merits." Verdigris (copper acetate) is that blue-green corrosion that creates the patina on bronze. Attractive on a statue, but in fact toxic to ingest, causing nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and burning pain in the mouth and stomach. Before the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, there were few restrictions on what food manufacturers could use to adulterate their products, and the range of non-food and even poisonous substances that were introduced into consumer foods was truly horrifying.