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Cucumber Pickles

A quick cucumber pickle made with olive oil, mustard seeds, celery seed, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cucumbers and onions.

  2. Cover with coarse sea salt and let stand for 3 hours.

  3. Drain the cucumbers and onions.

Pack and seal

  1. Add olive oil, white mustard seed, black mustard seed, and celery seed.

  2. Pack the mixture into glass jars.

  3. Cover with vinegar and seal the jars.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 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

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickle and, once salted, release water that the brine and vinegar then replace.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma that mellow during the salting and pickling.
Olive oil
Coats the vegetables and carries the mustard and celery seed flavors through the jar.
White mustard seed
Adds mild, sharp pungency and a crisp bite to the pickled vegetables.
Black mustard seed
Contributes a hotter, more pungent mustard flavor than white seed.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, preserving the vegetables and giving them their tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Draining after the salt rest. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and onions. Draining away that liquid, and not letting the vegetables sit wet, keeps the pickles crisp and stops the jar from being diluted before the vinegar is added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, olive, mustard, celery, 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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

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

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