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To Pickle Cucumbers

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Pickle Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak cucumbers in saltwater for 4-5 hours until green.

  2. Drain cucumbers on a sieve and let them cool.

  3. Mix in horse-radish, mustard-seed, garlic, and peppercorns.

  4. Slice additional cucumbers and repeat the mixture until filled.

  5. Sew the cut piece back on with a needle and thread.

  6. Prepare the pickle by boiling alegar with mace, cloves, ginger, long pepper, black pepper, Jamaica pepper, mustard-seed, garlic, and horse-radish for 5 minutes.

  7. Pour the hot pickle over the cucumbers, seal, and store for later use.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Radish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, horse, radish, mustard, garlic, clove, ginger):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, horse, radish, mustard, garlic, clove, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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