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Sliced Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using cucumbers, onions, salt, vinegar, mustard seed, cloves, mace, turmeric, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,279 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sliced Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cucumbers and onions.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let sit for 3-4 hours.

  3. Drain the cucumbers and onions.

Pickle and seal

  1. Boil in vinegar for 10 minutes with mustard seed, cloves, mace, turmeric, and brown sugar.

  2. Pack into jars and seal tightly with paper.

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 + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Clove + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, crunchy body of the pickles.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory flavor as they soften in the brine.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that flavors and preserves the pickles.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, warm aroma and bite to the brine.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Turmeric
Gives the pickles their yellow color and an earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Drain the salted cucumbers and onions well. Salt draws water out of the vegetables, so draining them thoroughly keeps the pickles crisp and stops extra liquid from diluting the vinegar brine.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, vinegar, mustard, clove, turmeric, 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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