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Dill Pickles

Cucumbers pickled in a dill and grape leaf brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 jar

  1. Wash the cucumbers.

  2. Place a layer of grape leaves in the bottom of a jar or keg.

  3. Add a layer of cucumbers and a head or two of dill.

  4. Repeat layering with more grape leaves, cucumbers, and dill until the container is full.

Brine and weight

  1. Heat the water to boiling, stir in the salt, and let it cool.

  2. Pour the cooled brine over the cucumbers until they are covered.

  3. Weight the cucumbers down with an upside-down china plate and a weight on top.

Rebrine and finish

  1. After about a week, drain off the brine, heat it to boiling, cool it, and pour it back 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. Cucumber + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + grapetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

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

  3. Dill + grapetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together110 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crunchy body of the pickle that absorbs the brine's salt and flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and inhibits spoilage microbes during fermentation.
Dill
Contributes the characteristic aroma and flavour of dill pickles.

The step that matters

Keep the cucumbers fully submerged under the brine. Cucumbers exposed to air can soften and grow mold during fermentation. The weighted plate keeps them below the liquid, where salt-tolerant lactic acid bacteria can dominate and protect the pickles.

Swap the grape

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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