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Oil Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber recipe using salt, onions, red pepper, mustard seeds, alum, vinegar, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard 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 ↓

Oil Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and let stand for 3 hours.

  3. Thoroughly drain in a colander for 2 hours.

Combine and pack

  1. In a large bowl, mix the cucumbers, onions, red pepper, mustard seeds, alum, vinegar, and olive oil.

  2. Pack the mixture into Mason jars without cooking or heating.

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

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 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, watery body that makes up most of the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, which helps them stay crisp once drained.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sour, tangy flavor.
Olive oil
Coats the vegetables and adds richness and body to the pickle.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavor as the seeds soften in the liquid.

The step that matters

Draining the salted cucumbers. Salt pulls water out of the cucumbers. Draining them thoroughly removes that liquid so the pickle stays crisp and the oil and vinegar mixture is not diluted.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, mustard, white wine, vinegar, olive):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, mustard, white wine, vinegar, olive. 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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