Attention Pickle lovers everywhere ….

In Crossing Delancey, a single woman searching for love fails to see what is right in front of her. The man who will eventually win her heart is not ridiculously handsome or flashy, nor a tortured poet. He sells pickles. Isabelle (Amy Irving) can’t see it, but her bubbe (Reizl Bozyk) can.

She understands that Sam Posner (Peter Riegert) – warm, grounded and traditional – is a keeper. So what if he has to rub his hands in vanilla to
lose the smell of vinegar?! In 1988, Joan Micklin Silver’s film Crossing Delancey made a compelling case for pickles as a love language and, for many of us, it still does.

Decades later, the pickle is having a moment. No longer confined to jars, it has gone rogue: dusted over crisps, spun into sweets, and even stamped unashamedly across chocolate bars by M&S. For added spice, the pickle now turns up in shots, in ice cream and – for the truly committed – in snack packets in place of peanuts.

My late mother would have loved this cucumis (Latin) renaissance. She never liked sweets as a child, so trips to the cinema on Clapton Common meant my grandmother bringing new green instead. And, once pickled, the cucumber is unmistakably Jewish. Not that we invented pickling – it stretches back to ancient preservation methods in the Middle East – but we refined it in Eastern Europe, fermenting it with garlic and dill so it would last through long winters and many journeys. They may have tasted sour – but so was life.

For years, Britain’s relationship with the pickle was mediated by Mrs Elswood, a woman who only existed in the minds of the company that brought her gherkins from the Netherlands by biplane in 1947. Perhaps they thought a female figure in an apron felt dependable at a time when the country was still using ration books, and Mrs E became the friendly face of a flavour developed in immigrant kitchens – and for that, we owe her.

But now the jar has burst open. Pickling has gone loud, proud and artisanal in the brine-soaked hands of picklers such as James Cooper and Natalie Preston. Around a decade ago, the couple began making kimchi for friends. A jar here, a tub there. Requests followed. Then repeat requests.

With lockdown, that following grew again with the introduction of the “make-away” – a meal delivered half-done to finish at home.
“It was Shabbat-inspired,” says Natalie, “but not a traditional menu. It was designed to land at the end of the working week and make life easier.”

Walthamstow’s Lloyd Park Market is where their business properly took shape, selling kimchi, pickles (radishes and turnips too) and hot sauces under the name Shedletskys – in honour of James’s great-grandfather Sam, a kosher butcher in London’s East End in the 1920s. “The name was a real conversation starter,” says Natalie. “We suddenly met Jewish people living locally, wanting to connect. We had no idea how wide the pickle conversation could be.”

Family threads run through everything they do. Natalie’s parents had an allotment, and the shallots grown there, once steeped in malt vinegar, were devoured by Natalie. James’s parents ran a hotel in the West Country, where menus were handwritten and, even after it stopped being
a hotel, the extended family (cousins) continued living there together.

Is James’s grandmother, now 102, living proof of the power of pickles? Natalie laughs. “When she moved into a care home and we delivered her food, seeing the Shedletsky name printed on the bag touched her deeply.”

Natalie balances pickling with her work as an art designer in film, including projects with Mike Leigh. While overseeing props, the odd jar of Shedletskys has quietly made its way into a set fridge. Now living in Leighton with cats Millie
and Leonard Cohen, the couple moved production from their kitchen to an arch up the road “because the smell got overwhelming”.

Those jars are now stocked in 30 to 40 shops, including Panzer’s in St John’s Wood, where Shedletskys held the launch of their book, Tickle Your Pickle – a collection of 65 pickling recipes.

And in a neat closing of the circle, Shedletskys pickles were recently served at a special screening of Crossing Delancey at the Garden Cinema in Covent Garden. Just as Isabelle’s bubbe always knew: being a pickle seller is enough!

Buy tickets for a Pickle Shabbat with Shedletskys & Friends on 29 May and 5 June as part of Jewish Culture Month. Or just invest in their pickles  https://shedletskysdeli.com