Pickle & Preserve

Hors d'oeuvres like this one are great for entertaining — the vegetables benefit from being prepared in advance, becoming more flavorful as they absorb the pickling liquid. The recipe also yields a large batch, so you'll have plenty on hand.

Jalapeño peppers and a double hit of mint liven up traditional mint jelly. Try it with crackers and cheese and with lamb or chicken.

Our all-time favourite snack — salty, spicy, dried meat — also makes a great garnish for salads, soups and vegetables when finely shaved with a sharp knife. Creative cooks even blend it into pâté to spread on toast. Drying meat and fish was a necessary method of preservation prior to refrigeration. The concept isn't the sole preserve of Afrikaners, though. An earlier delicacy — tassal meat — was similarly prepared: strips of meat were rubbed with salt and coriander, laid in vinegar for a time, then panfried. In rural communities, black tribes would cut up and dry the flesh of animals that died accidentally or of natural causes (cattle were seldom slaughtered for food). The Swazi people call it umcweba or umcwayiba. Coriander seeds, formerly brought from Asia, are an essential ingredient in the preparation of good biltong. The name is Greek for bedbugs — nasty goggas that the seeds resemble!

We ran many jelly recipes in the 1940s, but this one impressed us the most. Sophisticated and subtle, it makes a light, delicious alternative not only to the shocking-green mint jelly that often accompanies lamb but even to gravy: Try it with any roasted or grilled meat. It's also an indispensable condiment for blue cheese.

These sweet-and-sour peaches perk up the flavor of ham and fried chicken; they are also very good with vanilla ice cream.

The longer you let the vinaigrette stand, the spicier the kick from the chiles. And we know the dressing calls for a lot of thyme, but we loved the result.

In Malaysian cuisine, at least one pickled dish (acar) is offered with every meal — it provides a bold flavor contrast to the other dishes. Our recipe isn't traditional, but it serves the same purpose.

The mead you make with this recipe will reflect the qualities of the honey you use. Consult our guide to mead and consider using a first-rate varietal honey. Because mead is fairly high in alcohol (10- to 12-percent by volume), I recommend 12-ouncebottles over 22-ounce ones.

You may add 1/4 cup of lemon juice to this jam, right at the end, to give it a tart edge that sets off the flavor of the strawberries.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less but requires additional unattended time.

On the gift card that she encloses with these preserves, food editor Kristine Kidd tells her friends to spread the pear butter on toast, French toast or pancakes or to heat it and spoon it over vanilla ice cream. If you want to omit the canning process, go ahead: The butter can be stored in the refrigerator up to two weeks.

Cipolline in Agrodolce These onions — an homage to New York's Italian-American communities — are great as part of an antipasto or as a condiment for salty meats such as baked ham or duck confit. Although they are hard to resist as soon as they are cooked, the flavors continue to develop over a few days. Active time: 40 min Start to finish: 2 hr (plus 1 day for flavors to develop)