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Pickled Cucumbers

A brined cucumber pickle with onion, horseradish, peppers, and spices, preserved in 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

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Make a brine with 1 pint of coarse sea salt and 6 quarts of boiling water.

  2. Boil and skim clear.

  3. Wash 150 small cucumbers.

  4. Soak them in the brine for 48 hours, covered.

  5. Drain.

  6. Soak the cucumbers in cold water for 2 hours.

  7. Drain again.

Pack and spice

  1. Place in a crock.

  2. Add the onion, horseradish root, red peppers, and alum to the crock.

  3. Fill a muslin bag with the mixed spices.

  4. Boil the bag in enough vinegar to cover the cucumbers for 10 minutes.

  5. Place the spice bag in the crock with the vinegar.

Cure

  1. On the third day, pour off the vinegar.

  2. Reheat it.

  3. Return it to the pickles.

  4. Do not use for three weeks.

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

Coarse sea 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 sharp flavor.
Small cucumbers
Form the body of the pickles, becoming firm and crisp through brining.
Horseradish root
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during curing.

The step that matters

Soaking in the brine for 48 hours, covered. The salt must penetrate evenly and draw water out so the cucumbers firm up and stay crisp. Keeping them covered keeps the surface clean and the brine from evaporating or being contaminated during the long soak.

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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