Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Cucumbers

A vinegar-based cucumber pickle with ginger, celery seed, cinnamon, turmeric, horseradish, garlic, pepper, cloves, mace, allspice, brown sugar, and optional red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pickled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. Boil the brown sugar in the vinegar until dissolved.

  2. Add all the spices, except for garlic and horseradish, and let cool.

  3. Once cool, add garlic and horseradish.

Pickle and rest

  1. Boil cucumbers in plain vinegar until tender.

  2. Pour the spiced vinegar over the cucumbers while hot.

  3. Let the pickles sit for a week before using.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + turmerictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turmeric + horseradishtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cucumbers
The main vegetable, softened by boiling and then flavoured by the spiced vinegar.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice to the pickling liquid.
Celery seed
Adds a savoury, herbal aroma to the pickling liquid.
Turmeric
Adds yellow colour and an earthy flavour to the pickles.

The step that matters

Pour the spiced vinegar over the cucumbers while hot. Hot liquid helps the cucumbers absorb the spiced brine and keeps the pickling liquid at a temperature that aids flavour penetration. Letting it cool first can slow absorption and leave the pickles less flavourful.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, ginger, celery, cinnamon, turmeric, horseradish, pepper):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, ginger, celery, cinnamon, turmeric, horseradish, pepper. 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.

More pickled cucumbers recipes

Sweet 28and Onions 10Oil 8Green 4 See all 231 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesHorseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes