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Pickled Cucumbers

Pickled cucumbers made by boiling cucumbers in salted water, then preserving them in a vinegar solution with sugar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pickled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Place small cucumbers in a jar.

  2. Pour boiling water over the cucumbers and add enough coarse sea salt to season nicely.

  3. Repeat boiling this water for four mornings in succession.

  4. On the fourth morning, add a pinch of alum.

Pickle

  1. On the fifth morning, take enough vinegar to cover pickles and put it in a porcelain kettle with a little sugar and the tied spices.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Drain the cucumbers from the salt water and place them in a stone jar.

  4. Pour the boiling vinegar over the cucumbers until the jar is filled.

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

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

  2. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cucumber + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers
Are the vegetable being preserved, becoming crisp and firm as they pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the brining stage.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickles their sour flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Repeating the boiling brine over four mornings. Each pour of boiling water partly cooks the cucumber surface and draws out moisture while the salt seasons it. Repeating the process gradually firms the cucumbers and seasons them throughout, so skipping mornings or cooling the water too much may leave them soft or under-seasoned.

Swap the horseradish

The recipe marks horseradish as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, 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.

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