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Spiced Pickle

A pickled cucumber recipe with mustard seeds, celery seed, onions, vinegar, oil, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Spiced Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Wash and slice the cucumbers without peeling them.

  2. Sprinkle the cucumbers with coarse sea salt and let them drain for 3 hours.

Combine and rest

  1. In a bowl, combine the vinegar, salad oil, white mustard seed, black mustard seed, celery seed, and sliced onions.

  2. Add the drained cucumbers to the dressing and mix well.

  3. Let the mixture sit for 3 weeks 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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 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
Provide the crisp, watery body of the pickle that the dressing soaks into.
Vinegar
Supplies the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavor.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp heat that mellows as the pickle rests.
Black mustard seed
Contributes a stronger, more pungent mustard bite to the dressing.
Salad oil
Adds fat that carries the spice flavors and softens the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Draining the salted cucumbers. Salt draws water out of the cucumber slices through osmosis. Skipping or shortening the drain leaves excess liquid that dilutes the dressing and makes the pickles limp rather than crisp.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, mustard, celery. 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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