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To Pickle Cucumbers a Second Way

A method of pickling cucumbers using garlic, mustard seeds, mace, pepper, ginger, salt, and white wine vinegar, kept warm for three days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pickle Cucumbers a Second Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather cucumbers on a dry day and place them in a narrow-topped pitcher.

  2. Add garlic, mustard seeds, mace, black pepper, long pepper, ginger, and salt to the vinegar.

Pickle

  1. Pour the boiling hot vinegar over the cucumbers.

  2. Keep the cucumbers warm for three days, boiling the vinegar once each day.

  3. Cover the cucumbers until they turn a good green, then tie them down with leather for storage.

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

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

  2. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The main vegetable being preserved; they soften and take on the pickling flavour.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acid that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the brine and helps draw moisture out of the cucumbers.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that infuses into the vinegar and cucumbers.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling hot vinegar over the cucumbers. Hot vinegar helps the brine penetrate the cucumbers and begins killing surface microbes, so it should be poured while fully boiling rather than lukewarm.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, garlic, mustard, pepper, ginger, white wine, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, garlic, mustard, pepper, ginger, white wine, 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.

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