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Perfection Pickles

A quick cucumber pickle made with mustard, sugar, salt, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and cucumber 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 ↓

Perfection Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Wash and wipe cucumbers.

  2. Pack cucumbers in jars or cans, cutting large ones into quarters.

Make the brine

  1. Mix mustard, sugar, salt, and cider vinegar thoroughly.

Pour and cure

  1. Pour the mixture over the cucumbers cold.

  2. Cover with a plate weighted to keep them under the brine.

  3. Let sit for 8 days before using.

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 + cucumbertop 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. Vinegar + cucumbertop 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
The main vegetable being pickled, absorbing the flavor of the brine as it cures.
Mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that gives the pickles their characteristic bite.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the brine its tang and helps preserve the cucumbers.

The step that matters

Keeping the cucumbers under the brine. Pieces left above the liquid are exposed to air and can spoil or mold. The weighted plate keeps every piece submerged in the acidic brine, which protects the cucumbers during the long cure.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, sugar, 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, sugar, 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.

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