Skip to main content
Main

Cucumber or Gherkin Pickle

A pickled cucumber or gherkin preserved in brine, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cucumber or Gherkin Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Pack cucumbers in a stone jar or wooden bucket.

  2. Layer the cucumbers with coarse sea salt and cover the top layer with salt.

  3. Pour enough cold water to cover all cucumbers.

  4. Place a small plate or board on top and weight the plate down with a clean stone.

  5. Leave in brine for 1 week to 1 month, stirring every other day.

  6. Discard the brine and any softened cucumbers.

  7. Soak remaining cucumbers in cold fresh water for 24 hours.

  8. Change the water for another day.

Green and crisp

  1. Line a kettle with vine leaves and layer the pickles inside the kettle.

  2. Sprinkle powdered alum over the pickles, then fill the kettle with cold water.

  3. Cover with vine leaves.

  4. Steam over low heat for 5 to 6 hours without boiling.

  5. Transfer pickles to very cold water once they are a fine green.

Spice and pack in vinegar

  1. Prepare the vinegar by boiling it with sugar, black peppers, cloves, allspice, and mace for 5 minutes.

  2. Pour the scalding hot vinegar over the cucumbers in a stone jar and cover the jar tightly.

  3. Two days later, scald the vinegar again.

  4. Return the scalded vinegar to the pickles.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers
Provide the crisp body that the brine and alum work on.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and firms their texture during brining.
Powdered alum
Helps the pickles stay firm and crisp during the long steaming.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that preserves and flavours the pickles.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Black peppers, cloves, allspice, and mace
Add warm aromatic spice flavour to the pickling vinegar.

The step that matters

Steaming without boiling. Holding the kettle at a gentle simmer-free low heat for 5 to 6 hours keeps the cucumbers firm and a fine green. Boiling would soften the flesh and dull the colour, and the alum helps the pickles hold their crispness.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar, pepper, clove, allspice. 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 pickle recipes

Brine 4Sweet 4 See all 18 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes