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Cucumber Pickles

A method of preserving cucumbers by soaking them in salt, water, and vinegar over several days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Wash the cucumbers and pour boiling water over them with 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt.

  2. The next day, boil the same water and pour it over the cucumbers again.

  3. On the third day, soak the cucumbers in fresh warm water for 2 hours.

  4. Allow the cucumbers to dry slowly.

Pickle in vinegar

  1. Soak the cucumbers in weak vinegar for 4 to 5 days, then transfer them to spiced 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 + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Main vegetable that becomes crisp-tender and absorbs the vinegar flavour during pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them before pickling.
Weak vinegar
Acidifies the cucumbers and begins preserving them during the first soak.
Spiced vinegar
Adds acidity and spice flavour to the cucumbers in the final soak.

The step that matters

Drying the cucumbers slowly. Cucumbers that stay wet hold surface water that dilutes the vinegar and softens the texture. Drying them well lets the vinegar penetrate evenly and helps the pickles stay firm.

“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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