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Small Cucumbers or Gherkins

A pickled cucumber recipe using a salt brine, vinegar, alum, spices, and horseradish or grape leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Small Cucumbers or Gherkins

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Prepare a salt brine that will float a potato and soak the cucumbers for 24 hours.

  2. Remove the cucumbers and wipe them dry.

Cook and pack

  1. Place them in a kettle with enough weak vinegar to cover and add the piece of alum.

  2. Spread horseradish or grape leaves over the cucumbers.

  3. Heat the kettle on the back of the stove for the entire day until heated through.

  4. Transfer the cucumbers to glass jars.

Spice and seal

  1. In the kettle, add fresh vinegar, whole cloves, mustard seed, red and black pepper, and prepared spices.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then pour it over the cucumbers while hot and seal the jars.

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

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

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

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Potato + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers or gherkins
Form the pickles themselves, absorbing the brine and vinegar to become crisp and tangy.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the 24-hour brine soak.
Weak vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and flavors the cucumbers during the long heating.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp through the prolonged heating.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Heating the kettle for the entire day. Heating must be gentle and steady so the cucumbers warm through without turning soft or mushy. Alum helps keep their firmness during this long heat.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

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