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Dill Pickles

A preserved cucumber dish made with dill, vinegar, salt, sugar, alum, and water, boiled in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Dill and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 659 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dill Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Pack the jars

  1. Wash and pack dill pickles in quart jars, adding dill between layers.

  2. To each jar, add ½ cup vinegar, 1 tablespoon salt, 1 tablespoon sugar, and 1 teaspoon alum.

  3. Fill the rest of the jar with water and place the covers on loosely.

Heat and seal

  1. Place the jars in a boiler with water up to the necks of the jars.

  2. When the water boils and the pickles start to turn yellow, seal the jars immediately.

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 + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together659 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Dill + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Dill pickles
Provide the main vegetable and flavor base of the finished pickle.
Vinegar
Adds the acidity that gives pickles their sour taste and helps preserve them.
Salt
Seasons the brine and helps draw out moisture and firm the cucumbers.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Alum
Helps keep the pickles firm and crisp during processing.

The step that matters

Sealing when the pickles turn yellow. Sealing too early or too late affects safety and texture. Heating the jars in boiling water drives air out and creates a vacuum seal, while the color change signals the pickles are heated through. Watching for both cues keeps the jars properly sealed.

Swap the dill

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Dillthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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