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New Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using salt water, vinegar, and horseradish or grape leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

New Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Soak the cucumbers in 1 gallon of water with 1 cup of coarse sea salt for 24 hours.

  2. Change the salt water three times.

  3. Drain the salt water.

Pickle

  1. Place the cucumbers in a brass kettle.

  2. Cover the cucumbers with good vinegar and horseradish leaves.

  3. Boil until the cucumbers have taken the green from the leaves.

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 + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 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. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 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

Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the long soak.
Vinegar
Adds the sour acidity that defines the pickle and helps preserve it.
Horseradish leaves
Pass green colour and a mild aroma to the cucumbers during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil until the cucumbers have taken the green from the leaves. The green comes from pigment in the leaves moving into the cucumbers over time in hot vinegar. Boiling too long softens the cucumber flesh, so the cook should watch for colour change and texture rather than a fixed time.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Horseradishthe 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.

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