Skip to main content
Main

Olive Oil Pickles

Pickled cucumbers, onions, and red peppers in olive oil, vinegar, mustard seed, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Olive Oil Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice cucumbers and onions.

  2. Soak in salt brine overnight.

  3. Drain well.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a large pot, bring cider vinegar and sugar to a boil.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

Combine and pack

  1. Combine the cooled mixture with cucumbers, onions, red peppers, mustard seed, and olive oil.

  2. Pack the mixture into 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. 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. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, bulky body of the pickles.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickles.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a richer mouthfeel to the pickled vegetables.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, aromatic pungency to the brine.
Onions
Add savory flavor and a little bite to the mix.

The step that matters

Drain well after the salt brine. Excess brine left on the cucumbers and onions dilutes the vinegar mixture and can make the pickles soggy and overly salty. Thorough draining keeps the texture crisp and the flavor balanced.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, mustard, olive, cider, vinegar, sugar. 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

Ham in CiderHam in Cider10 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes