Skip to main content
Main

Sliced Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber recipe using boiling water, vinegar, alum, horseradish, mustard seeds, cloves, and cinnamon.

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

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 the cucumbers

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

  2. Repeat this process for three mornings.

Make the pickling vinegar

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

  2. Add alum and horseradish to the vinegar.

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

Pack and seal

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

  2. Pour the scalding vinegar 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 crisp body of the pickles.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the pickles.
Alum
Helps firm the cucumber texture so the pickles stay crisp.
Horseradish root
Adds a sharp, pungent heat to the vinegar.
Mustard seeds
Contribute a sharp, pungent flavor to the pickling liquid.
Ground cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pouring the scalding vinegar over the cucumbers. The cucumbers must be fully covered by the hot vinegar and the jars sealed tightly. Parts left exposed to air can spoil, and the hot acidic liquid helps the pickles keep.

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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

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

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce23 recipesHorseradish ButterHorseradish Butter6 recipesHam in CiderHam in Cider10 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes