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Dill Pickles

Pickled cucumbers preserved in vinegar with dill, ginger, horseradish, salt, and grape leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Soak cucumbers overnight in cold water.

  2. Boil and cool the vinegar the night before.

  3. In the morning, change the water on the cucumbers.

  4. Brush each cucumber thoroughly with a stiff vegetable brush.

Fill the jars

  1. Drain the cucumbers and place them in quart jars, arranging by size.

  2. Add gingerroot, horseradish root, salt, dill, and grape leaves to each jar.

  3. Pour vinegar into the jars until they are about two-thirds full.

  4. Fill the jars with water until they are full.

Seal and rest

  1. Seal the jars and set them aside for a few 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. Cucumber + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

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

  2. Horseradish + dilltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. White wine + grapetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together201 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers
Form the body of the pickle, becoming crisp and firm as they cure in the brine.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that sours the pickle and helps preserve it.
Dill
Contributes the characteristic herbal aroma and flavor of dill pickles.
Grape leaves
Their tannins help the cucumbers stay crisp during long brining.
Gingerroot
Adds a warm, sharp aromatic bite to the brine.
Horseradish root
Adds pungent heat that deepens the pickle's flavor.

The step that matters

Pour in the cooled vinegar. The vinegar must be cooled after boiling before it goes into the jars. Hot liquid softens cucumbers and cooks them, which leads to mushy pickles instead of crisp ones.

Swap the grape

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, white wine, vinegar, horseradish, 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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