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Celery Pickles

A pickled cucumber dish flavored with celery seed, mustard seed, and alum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Celery Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Slice cucumbers thinly using a vegetable slicer.

  2. Pour boiling hot weak brine over the cucumbers and let them stand for 24 hours.

Pickle and store

  1. In a pot, combine 1 gallon of vinegar, 1 ounce of white mustard seed, 1 ounce of celery seed, and ½ teaspoon of pulverized alum; boil the mixture.

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the pickles.

  3. Transfer pickles to old pickle bottles and seal, or place in a jar covered with a cloth, rinsing the cloth occasionally.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cucumber + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,745 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the pickle itself; thin slices soak up the brine and vinegar flavour.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickles.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that carries through the pickling liquid.
Celery seed
Adds the aromatic celery flavour that defines this pickle.
Pulverized alum
Helps the cucumber slices stay firm and crisp during pickling.

The step that matters

Soaking in boiling hot weak brine for 24 hours. The brine must be boiling hot when poured over the sliced cucumbers so the salt draws out water and begins firming the slices. Letting them stand the full 24 hours gives the brine time to penetrate evenly, which affects crispness and flavour.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, mustard. 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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