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Onion and Cucumber Pickle

A pickled mixture of cucumbers and onions in a vinegar and spice sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Onion and Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the cucumbers and onions, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and let stand overnight.

  2. Rinse and drain well in cold water.

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, flour, mustard, celery seed, turmeric, and cayenne. Cook until thick.

  2. Add the cucumbers and onions to the pot and cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Put the mixture in bottles and seal.

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. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, firm bulk of the pickle after salting and draining.
Onions
Add bulk and mild sweetness that softens during cooking.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and sharpens its flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture into a thick, cohesive sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until thick before adding the vegetables. Flour thickens only when heated enough to gelatinize its starch, so the sauce must reach a thick state first. Adding vegetables too early can leave the flour lumpy and the sauce thin.

Swap the onion

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

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

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