Skip to main content
Main

Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber recipe with brine, alum, spices, and sweetened vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and firm

  1. Soak cucumbers in brine for 24 hours; if not salty enough, soak for an additional 12 hours.

  2. Remove cucumbers from brine.

  3. Place cucumbers in clear, cold water, letting water run over them overnight or changing the water several times.

  4. Line a large pan or kettle with grape leaves.

  5. Fill the pan with water mixed with 1 large spoonful of powdered alum.

  6. Add cucumbers to the alum water.

  7. Let stand for 3 to 4 hours without rinsing.

Pack and pickle

  1. In a gallon jar, layer cucumbers with the spices: red peppers, mustard seed, celery seed, cinnamon bark, horseradish, and garlic.

  2. Heat ½ gallon of white wine vinegar with granulated sugar until boiling.

  3. Pour the hot sweetened vinegar over the cucumbers in the jar.

  4. Seal the jar while hot.

  5. Let it stand for several days, checking to ensure the pickles are submerged in vinegar.

  6. Add more sweetened vinegar if necessary.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The main vegetable, which the brine and alum soaks firm and crisp.
Powdered alum
Helps keep the cucumber pieces firm and crisp during soaking.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavor.
Granulated sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and flavor to the pickles.

The step that matters

Let the cucumbers soak until the alum water has firmed them, without rinsing. Alum hardens the cucumber tissue so the pickles stay crisp rather than going soft. Rinsing too early washes away the alum's effect, and the pickles can turn limp in the vinegar.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, mustard, celery, cinnamon, horseradish, garlic):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, mustard, celery, cinnamon, horseradish, garlic. 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 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesHorseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes