While perusing the inimitable Snopes pages, I enjoyed their article on Heinz and its 57 varieties.
One of the Heinze products listed is “euchred pickels,” which conjures the unlikely mental image of cucumbers play cards. A websearch was unhelpful, but did turn up another product: “euchred figs.” I imagine this is some sort of preservative method, but does anyone know what it means?
This page, http://www.texfiles.com/pioneercooking/pickling.htm, on “Pioneer Cookin’” has this description of “Euchered Crab Apples”
I’m not clear on what exactly is unique to “euchering”, though. For example, the “Sweet Pickled Peaches” on the same page seem to be processed in a very similar manner.
This has cropped up on Usenet: “euchred / euchered” apparently means “slightly tart, acid or spiced”. Euchred figs were figs preserved in spiced sugar syrup (see here).
Uh. Sweet pickles. Whodda thunk. Thanks folks!