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Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using boiling brine and hot vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Wash and wipe the small cucumbers.

  2. Place the cucumbers in jars.

  3. Cover the cucumbers with boiling brine and let them stand for 24 hours.

  4. Remove the cucumbers.

  5. Wipe them again.

  6. Place them in clean jars.

Pickle

  1. Cover the cucumbers with hot vinegar spiced with onion, cloves, mustard seed, and mace.

  2. Let the pickles sit for two weeks before serving.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers
Provide the crisp body that the brine and vinegar transform into pickles.
Boiling brine
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them, firming their texture before pickling.
Hot vinegar
Acidity preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickles their sharp, tangy flavour.
Mustard seed
Releases pungent, savoury flavour into the vinegar as the pickles steep.

The step that matters

Cover the cucumbers with hot vinegar spiced with onion, cloves, mustard seed, and mace.. The vinegar must be acidic enough to preserve the cucumbers and keep them safe. Cucumbers left after the brine must be fully rinsed and wiped, since residual salt and moisture dilute the vinegar and weaken the pickling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, egg, vinegar, onion, clove, mustard):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, egg, vinegar, onion, clove, mustard. 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 cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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