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Sliced Cucumber Pickles

A simple cucumber pickle made by salting, brining, and boiling vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and dill match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 530 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sliced Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the cucumbers and cut them lengthwise into quarters.

  2. Salt the cucumbers well and let them sit overnight.

  3. Drain off the brine.

  4. Place the cucumbers in a crock with some dill.

Pickle

  1. Boil enough vinegar to cover the pickles with mixed spices and sugar to taste.

  2. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the pickles.

  3. Pour off the vinegar and boil it again.

  4. While hot, pour the vinegar back over the pickles.

  5. Let the pickles stand for several days before using.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cucumber + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Dill + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together659 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cucumber + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the pickles' crisp-to-bite body once salted and soaked in vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, firming them and seasoning them before pickling.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickles their sharp flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot vinegar back over the pickles. Reheating the vinegar and pouring it back while hot helps keep the pickles warm and lets the brine penetrate evenly. Letting the pickles stand for several days allows the flavors to develop.

Swap the dill

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Dillthe original
  4. Peppermintfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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