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Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using vinegar, sugar, salt, ground mustard, and cucumbers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. Mix the sugar, salt, and ground mustard together in a bowl.

  2. Add the vinegar to the mixture and stir well.

Pickle

  1. Place the cucumbers in a large jar.

  2. Pour the mixture over the cucumbers until they are fully covered.

  3. Cover the jar with a plate and let it sit.

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 + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The vegetable being pickled; it absorbs the brine's acidity and flavor.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that sours the brine and helps preserve the pickles.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Ground mustard
Contributes a pungent, sharp flavor to the brine.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture over the cucumbers until they are fully covered.. Cucumbers left above the liquid stay exposed to air and can spoil or pickle unevenly, while fully submerged pieces are protected by the acidic brine and absorb its flavor evenly.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

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

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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