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Pickled Cucumbers

A brined cucumber pickle with onion, horseradish, red peppers, alum, and spice‑infused vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 ↓

Pickled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. Dissolve 1 pint of coarse salt in 6 quarts of boiling water to make a brine, then boil and skim it clear.

  2. Wash 150 small cucumbers and soak them in the brine for 48 hours, covered.

  3. Drain the cucumbers and soak them in cold water for 2 hours, then drain again.

Pack and pickle

  1. Place the cucumbers in a crock with the onion, horseradish, red peppers, and alum.

  2. Boil the mixed spices in enough vinegar to cover the cucumbers for 10 minutes.

  3. Put the spice bag in the crock with the cucumbers and pour off the vinegar after 3 days.

  4. Reheat the vinegar and return it to the pickles.

  5. Let sit for 3 weeks 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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The main vegetable that is firmed and flavored by the brine and vinegar.
Coarse salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the brine soak.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sour flavor.
Alum
Helps keep the cucumbers firm and crisp during pickling.
Horseradish root
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that infuses the pickles.

The step that matters

Soak in the brine for 48 hours. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and firms their flesh; soaking too briefly leaves them soft, while the timed soak controls how much salt penetrates.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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