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Cucumber Pickles

A method for pickling cucumbers using salt, alum, spices, horseradish, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Wash and dry the cucumbers.

  2. Place them in a jar with salt and alum, then cover with boiling water.

  3. Seal the jar and let it stand for 24 hours.

  4. Remove the cucumbers from the jar. Wipe them dry.

Pack and pickle

  1. Layer them in a jar with mustard seed, allspice, horseradish, and red peppers.

  2. Fill the jar with strong boiling vinegar until it is two-thirds full of cucumbers. Cover the jar closely.

  3. Let it cool.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers
Are the main vegetable; their firm flesh holds crispness through brining and pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them, firming the texture for pickling.
Strong boiling vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during the long brining step.

The step that matters

Let the cucumbers stand in the salt and alum brine for 24 hours. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and alum helps keep the flesh firm; if the brine is too weak or the time is cut short, the pickles can soften and spoil. Keeping the jar sealed while it stands holds the brine around the cucumbers.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, mustard, allspice, horseradish, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, allspice, horseradish, pepper, vinegar. 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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