How to pickle onions

We planted onions late on Dad's allotment. The result was that when we picked them recently, they were quite small. They were, however, the right size for pickling. Here's how we pickled ours.

Peel the onions and put in a large bowl. Sprinkle a decent quantity of salt over them and leave for 24 hours, with a tee towel over the bowl. Then rinse the onions and pack them into jars.

To make picking vinegar, put a litre of white wine or cider vinegar into a pan. Add a level tablespoon of black peppercorns, 350g of sugar, a small number of cloves and a sprinkling of powdered mace. Bring to the boil and simmer for one minutes. Then pour into the jars.

Leave the onions for at least 2 weeks before starting to eat them. During that time the vinegar will penetrate the onions.