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German Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using brine, dill seed, mustard seed, horseradish, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

German Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the cucumbers in brine for 24 hours.

Pack and pour

  1. In a jar, layer the cucumbers with bay leaves, dill seed, mustard seed, and horseradish alternately.

  2. Boil the vinegar and sugar together. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the cucumbers.

  3. Cover the pickles and seal the jars while hot.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Dill + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  5. Dill + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together560 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 crisp, firm body of the pickle that the brine and vinegar work on.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that flavours the pickles as they sit.

The step that matters

Seal the jars while the vinegar mixture is hot. Pouring hot vinegar over the cucumbers and sealing the jars while hot helps drive air out and keeps the jars closed as they cool, so the pickles stay preserved and firm.

Swap the dill

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Dillthe original
  4. Allspicefits less well

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