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Dill Pickles

A simple dill pickle recipe using finger-sized pickles, dill, salt, and cold water, sun-cured until cloudy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Dill and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,630 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dill Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jar

  1. Fill a quart jar with finger-sized pickles.

  2. Add dill between the pickles.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt.

  4. Pour in cold water to fill the jar.

  5. Place dill on top.

  6. Seal the jar tightly.

Ferment in the sun

  1. Put the jar in the sun each day until the water becomes cloudy.

  2. When the water looks clear again, the pickles are ready to use.

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. Dill + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,630 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and keeps harmful microbes in check while beneficial bacteria ferment.
Dill
Adds the aromatic herb flavour that defines the pickle.

The step that matters

Adding the salt and water in the right proportion. Salt concentration controls the fermentation. Too little salt lets spoilage microbes take hold, while the brine must fully cover the pickles so that air does not cause mould or softening.

“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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