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Dill Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using dill, cherry leaves, and a vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and dill match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 530 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dill Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brine

  1. Combine water, vinegar, and salt in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Let the mixture cool before adding cucumbers.

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Soak cucumbers in weak salt water overnight, then rinse in clear water.

Pack and cover

  1. Pack cucumbers into jars with layers of cherry leaves and dill.

  2. Once jars are full, pour the cooled vinegar mixture over the cucumbers.

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 + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + cherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cherry + dilltop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Vinegar + dilltop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together659 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

Cucumbers
The main vegetable that becomes the pickles, firm and crisp once brined.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives pickles their sour flavour and helps preserve them.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons the brine, helping them stay firm.
Dill
Adds the characteristic herbal, aromatic flavour of dill pickles.

The step that matters

Soak cucumbers in weak salt water overnight. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and firms their texture, so skipping or shortening the soak can leave pickles soft. Rinsing afterwards removes surface salt so the final brine stays balanced.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

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