Skip to main content
Main

Oiled Pickles

A pickled cucumber and onion relish preserved in oil, mustard, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,928 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Oiled Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers and onions.

  2. Sprinkle the cucumbers and onions with salt in layers.

  3. Let them stand for 3 hours, then drain well.

Combine and pack

  1. Mix olive oil, ground mustard, black pepper, and allspice with enough cold vinegar to cover the vegetables.

  2. Pack the mixture into fruit jars for canning.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the main bulk of the pickle and stay crisp when salted and drained.
Onions
Add sharp flavour and sweetness that mellows as the pickle sits.
Olive oil
Coats the vegetables, adding richness and carrying the spice flavours.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that complements the vinegar.
Cold vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavour.

The step that matters

Draining after the salt rest. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and onions. If they are not drained well, excess liquid dilutes the vinegar and makes the pickle soft and watery rather than crisp.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, olive, mustard, pepper, allspice, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, olive, mustard, pepper, allspice, vinegar. 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 oil pickles recipes

Olive 16Cucumber 3 See all 19 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes