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To Pickle Cucumbers a Second Way

A pickled cucumber recipe using garlic, mustard seeds, mace, pepper, ginger, salt, and vinegar boiled daily.

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.

  3. Pour the boiling hot vinegar over the cucumbers.

Pickle and store

  1. Keep the pitcher warm for three days.

  2. Boil the vinegar once each day.

  3. Keep the cucumbers covered until they turn a good green.

  4. 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
Form the main body of the pickle and take on the green colour and crisp-to-soft texture during soaking.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acid that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, warm pungency that carries through the hot vinegar into the cucumbers.
Ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic note that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling hot vinegar over the cucumbers. The vinegar must be hot enough to start softening the cucumbers and drawing in flavour, and the repeated daily boiling keeps the brine hot and acidic enough to help preserve them. Letting it cool too much weakens this effect.

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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