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Cucumber Pickles

Cucumber pickles preserved in vinegar, salt, mustard, horseradish, and sealed with paraffin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the pickles

  1. Wash the pickles and place them in a jar.

  2. Mix the vinegar, coarse sea salt, and ground mustard.

  3. Pour the mixture over the pickles.

  4. Do not heat the mixture.

Pack and seal

  1. Cut the horseradish roots and place them on top.

  2. Divide the mixture into several small jars and cover with paraffin.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavor.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavor to the brine.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the brine and draws moisture out of the pickles.
Horseradish roots
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and heat as the brine soaks in.
Paraffin
Forms a seal over the jars that keeps air out of the brine.

The step that matters

Do not heat the mixture. Heating the brine softens cucumbers and cooks away the crispness. Keeping it cold preserves their firm texture and lets the pickles stay crisp.

“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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