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Sliced Cucumber Pickle

This recipe preserves sliced cucumbers in a vinegar brine with salt, alum, horseradish, mustard, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sliced Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Place cucumbers in a jar or pail and cover with boiling water mixed with salt.

  2. Cover tightly and repeat this process for three mornings.

Pickle and seal

  1. On the fourth morning, scald enough cider vinegar to cover cucumbers.

  2. Add alum and horseradish root to the vinegar.

  3. Tie mustard, cloves, and cinnamon in a small muslin bag and add to the vinegar.

  4. Slice cucumbers into ½ inch thick pieces and place in glass jars.

  5. Pour the scalding vinegar mixture over the cucumbers and seal tightly.

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 + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Radish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Cucumber + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together380 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

Cucumbers
Form the pickle itself; their firm flesh softens in the brine and takes on the vinegar flavour.
Cider vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its tang.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the brining stage.
Horse-radish root
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that fades as the pickles sit in the vinegar.
Mustard seeds
Contribute a sharp, slightly bitter flavour to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pouring the scalding vinegar over the cucumbers. The vinegar must be hot enough to help the cucumbers absorb flavour and to kill surface microbes before the jars are sealed. Sealing too early or letting it cool can leave the pickles less stable.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cider, vinegar, horse, radish, mustard, clove):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cider, vinegar, horse, radish, mustard, clove. 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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