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Sour Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using brine, vinegar, onions, cinnamon, sugar, alum, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Sour Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place cucumbers in brine and let stand for 2 days and nights.

  2. Wipe cucumbers dry and pack them in glass jars.

Pickle

  1. Heat vinegar and spices together.

  2. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over 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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together874 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp body of the pickle, which the brine and vinegar then season and firm.
Cider vinegar
Supplies the sour acidity that defines the pickle and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Balances the sourness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Onions
Add sharp aroma and savory flavor that mellows during pickling.

The step that matters

Soaking the cucumbers in brine. The brine must be strong enough to float an egg, and the cucumbers need the full two days. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers, firming their texture and reducing the water that would otherwise dilute the vinegar.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, egg, cider, vinegar, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, egg, cider, vinegar, cinnamon, sugar. 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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