Name: Pickles
Ingredients: fresh cucumbers; strong salt brine; boiling vinegar; spices (optional); other vegetables (e.g., cauliflower, bean pods, white cabbage, young walnuts, onions)

Why it works: Cucumber and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pickles

Ingredients

fresh cucumbers
strong salt brine
boiling vinegar
spices (optional)
other vegetables (e.g., cauliflower, bean pods, white cabbage, young walnuts, onions)

Directions

Soak fresh cucumbers in strong salt brine.
Dry the cucumbers on frames.
Treat the dried cucumbers with boiling vinegar.
Add spices to the vinegar if desired.
For other vegetables, soak in water and then treat directly with vinegar.

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.

Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together584 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together305 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together722 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together380 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

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

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, cauliflower, cabbage, onion):

Beansfits better
Lentilsfits better
Sesamefits better
Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, cauliflower, cabbage, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.