Skip to main content
Drink

Cucumber and Onion Pickles

Pickled cucumbers and onions preserved in vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber and Onion Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the cucumbers in salt brine overnight.

  2. Drain and rinse the cucumbers well with cold water, then dry them with a towel.

Pack and pickle

  1. In an earthen crock, layer the cucumbers, onions, and spices.

  2. Cover the layers with boiling hot vinegar.

  3. Let the pickles sit for three weeks 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. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main crisp body of the pickle once brined and packed.
Pickling onions
Add sharpness and sweetness that mellow during the long pickling period.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sour flavour.

The step that matters

Soaking the cucumbers in salt brine overnight. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers through osmosis, firming their texture so they stay crisp rather than turning soft in the vinegar.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, 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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesCucumber PicklesCucumber Pickles25 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipes