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Sliced Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber dish made by slicing cucumbers, salting, draining, seasoning with mustard seeds, and preserving in cold cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sliced Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Gather cucumbers before the seeds are large.

  2. Pare and soak the cucumbers in ice-cold water for 1 hour.

  3. Slice the cucumbers as thin as possible.

  4. Sprinkle the slices well with coarse sea salt.

  5. Tie the slices in a coarse cloth and place in a colander under a heavy weight to drain overnight.

  6. The next morning, mix in plenty of brown and white mustard seed.

Pack and store

  1. Pack the mixture into jars and cover well with cold cider vinegar.

  2. Store in a cool place.

  3. If scum rises on the vinegar, draw it off.

  4. Boil and skim the vinegar.

  5. Or substitute with other vinegar.

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

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

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Mustard + cidertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,414 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
Provide the crisp, watery bulk that the salt and vinegar transform into pickles.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumber slices, firming them and concentrating their flavor.
Brown mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavor and a bit of texture to the pickling mixture.
White mustard seed
Adds milder mustard flavor and texture alongside the brown seed.
Cold cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickles their tang.

The step that matters

Drain the salted slices overnight under weight. Salt draws out excess water; if the slices are not drained well, the pickle stays diluted and soft, and the vinegar cannot penetrate evenly.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, cider, 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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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