this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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My wife had to explain to me that pickles were pickled cucumbers and there wasn’t a pickle tree.
I was 30 something years old.
Me too, but I was in my 40's and found out at a bierfest.
I mean if it helps you they are made from a special pickle sized breed of cucumber.
Some kinds like gherkins are smaller than the cucumbers that show up in the store, but people pickle the large cukes as well (more common as the dill or sour varieties). Also in other countries it's common to pickle all kinds of vegetables and even some fruit
pretty sure the large "normal" cucumbers only get pickled after being sliced up, i have yet to see a footlong cucumber pickled whole.
Yeah the spears aren't quite that big usually--you probably have to go to an old timey general store for big ones.
If it helps there is a variant called "Parisian Pickling"
I was much younger when I figured it out, but my mom also did a lot of gardening and canning when I was younger, so we had all kinds of pickled vegetables on the shelves.
There was still an aha moment when I realized that pickles were just pickled cucumbers, just like the pickled greenbeans, and pickled beets, etc.
I guess cucumbers were first on the scene and got to use the shortened name ;-)