Bread and Butter Pickles: What are they and why are they called that?

There are some pickle names that make perfect sense.

Dill pickles contain dill. Garlic pickles contain garlic. Sweet pickles are sweet. Gherkins make sense if you speak Early Modern Dutch.

And then there are bread and butter pickles. 

No bread. No butter. Not even a hint of either.

So what exactly are they, and why on earth are they called bread and butter pickles?

What are Bread and Butter Pickles?

Bread and butter pickles are a sweet and tangy style of sliced cucumber pickle. The fact they're sliced is part of what makes them recognisable: we're generally talking cucumber rounds or “chips”, rather than the whole or speared cucumbers you might associate with a classic dill pickle.

They're usually pickled with vinegar and a fairly generous amount of sugar, along with onion and spices such as mustard seed, celery seed and turmeric. 

The result sits firmly at the sweeter end of the Pickle Universe.

Why are they called Bread and Butter Pickles?

One of the best-known explanations takes us to America in the early 20th century, where the name became associated with sweet, sliced cucumber pickles.

The often-told story is that cucumber farmers Omar and Cora Fanning preserved surplus cucumbers and traded their pickles with a local grocer for staples such as bread and butter. The name clearly stuck: the Fannings trademarked “Fanning’s Bread and Butter Pickles” in 1923.

A few years later, during the Great Depression, bread, butter and pickles reportedly became an inexpensive meal for families trying to stretch what little they had.

This is where that wonderful thing called the pickle sandwich makes its appearance.

Bread. Butter. Sliced pickles. Done.

The availability and low cost of the ingredients made it the sort of meal that could take the place of a sandwich filled with more expensive meat or cheese.  

In other words, it was a genuine struggle meal before anybody thought to call it a struggle meal.

And suddenly slicing the cucumbers makes rather a lot of sense. A whole dill pickle between two pieces of bread would be an engineering challenge - although I'm sure I've done it before in a fit of pickle desperation.

What do you eat Bread and Butter Pickles with?

The combination of sweetness, vinegar and crunch works beautifully against rich, salty and fatty foods. Try them in burgers, meaty sandwiches, or anything else strong and savoury that coud use a sweet, vinegary crunch. We really enjoyed Westmont's Bread and Butter Pickles on a trusty old salami and cheese sandwich.

On the other hand, if a few pickles between some slices of buttered white bread was good enough during the Depression, it's good enough for me now!