Name: Sliced Cucumber Pickle
Ingredients: 1 quart thinly sliced cucumbers; 2 large white onions; 2 large red or yellow sweet peppers; 2 tablespoons white mustard seed; 1 teacup white sugar; grated horseradish (to taste); 1 tablespoon celery seed; 1 quart vinegar; coarse sea salt (to taste)

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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 ↓

Sliced Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

Chop the sweet peppers.
Salt the sweet peppers separately.
Combine the onions and cucumbers in a bowl.
Sprinkle the mixture with salt.
Let the mixture sit for three hours.
Drain the mixture overnight to extract the salt water.

Make the pickles

Combine vinegar, mustard seed, sugar, grated horseradish, and celery seed in a pot.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the drained cucumbers, onions, and peppers.

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.

Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together640 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers: Provide the bulk and crisp texture of the pickles.
White onions: Add pungent, savory flavor that mellows during pickling.
Sweet peppers: Add mild sweetness, color, and a crisp bite.
White sugar: Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and keeps the pickles tangy.
White mustard seed: Contributes a sharp, warm flavor to the brine.

The step that matters

Drain the salted vegetables thoroughly. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and onions. If they are not well drained, the leftover liquid dilutes the hot vinegar brine, leaving the pickles less crisp and less tangy.

Swap the onion

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

Lettucefits better
Radishfits better
Beetrootfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, mustard, sugar, horseradish, celery, 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 cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23 Green 9 Spiced 9 Small 7 Sliced 6 Sour 5 See all 334 →

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Celery Stew25 recipes

Horseradish Sauce17 recipes

Celery Croquettes16 recipes

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Sliced Cucumber Pickle