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Crisp Cucumber Pickles

A quick pickle made with vinegar, salt, sugar, mustard, alum, horseradish, spices, and cucumbers.

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 ↓

Crisp Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. Combine cider vinegar, salt, sugar, ground mustard, alum, diced horseradish, and spices in a large bowl.

Pickle

  1. Pick cucumbers from your garden as needed, wash them in cold water, and drop them into the prepared vinegar mixture.

  2. Ensure the cucumbers are fully submerged in the vinegar.

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. Horseradish + cucumbertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickles their sharp flavor.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the cucumbers and seasons the brine, helping them stay firm.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavor to the brine.
Alum
Helps keep the cucumbers firm and crisp during pickling.
Horseradish
Adds a pungent, sharp heat that flavors the brine.

The step that matters

Keep the cucumbers fully submerged. Any cucumber left above the vinegar brine is exposed to air, where spoilage microbes and mold can grow. Full submersion keeps the vegetables covered by the acidic liquid, which slows spoilage and keeps the pickles uniformly preserved.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Radishfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, sugar, mustard, horseradish. 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.

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