Delete comment from: Boston 1775
The French tariff schedule of 1715 listed two varieties of olives - both dried - at 2 sous per hundredweight; pickled olives aren't listed at all. Americans don't tend to eat dried olives anymore, but there are a variety of methods, including heat and salt, that produce a palatably savory article. Dried olives would also weigh considerably less than pickled olives shipped in their brine, and might well have endured ocean voyages more easily.
So I find the notion that pickled olives might have been something of a novelty on this side of the Atlantic perfectly plausible. And Knox's reaction may well have been informed by the dissonance between his expectations of what an olive should be - dried, perhaps salted, chewy - and his first experience of a pickled olive, which is a very different article.
Apr 1, 2014, 4:32:22 AM
Posted to What Henry Knox Would Not Eat