Skip to main content
Snack

Sliced Onion and Cucumber Pickle

A pickled mixture of sliced cucumbers and onions seasoned with salt, pepper, mustard seed, cinnamon, vinegar, port wine, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sliced Onion and Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the cucumbers and onions and let them stand overnight in coarse sea salt.

  2. Wash off the salt the next morning.

Layer and pickle

  1. In a stone jar, layer onions and cucumbers, sprinkling white pepper, mustard seed, and powdered cinnamon on each layer.

  2. Continue layering until the jar is almost full.

  3. In a separate container, mix vinegar, port wine, and olive oil.

  4. Pour the mixture over the pickles.

  5. Stir the contents gently and let sit for two weeks, stirring daily.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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
Form the crisp, bulky body of the pickles.
Onions
Add savory flavor and bulk to the layered pickles.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickles.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the pickling liquid.
Olive oil
Adds fat that softens the sharp edge of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Washing off the salt. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and onions overnight. Rinsing removes excess salt so the pickles do not taste harsh, though some salt must remain for crispness and preservation.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, mustard, cinnamon, vinegar, port wine, olive):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, mustard, cinnamon, vinegar, port wine, olive. 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.

You might also like

FrittersFritters56 recipesCrisp CrackersCrisp Crackers7 recipes