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Pickled Cucumbers

A brined cucumber pickle prepared with salt, vinegar, spices, and alum, then boiled and stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Pickled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Brine and yellow

  1. Make a brine with enough coarse sea salt in water to float an egg.

  2. Pour the brine over the cucumbers.

  3. Cover with cabbage leaves.

  4. Let sit for a week until yellow.

  5. Drain the water.

Green the cucumbers

  1. Place cucumbers in a porcelain kettle with fresh leaves and a piece of alum.

  2. Cover with vine leaves and a dish or cloth to trap steam.

  3. Fill the kettle with clear water.

  4. Heat gently over moderate heat for several hours.

  5. If cucumbers are not a pretty green, repeat the heating process.

  6. Once green, remove cucumbers.

  7. Drain on a sieve.

Pickle and spice

  1. Transfer to a clean stone jar.

  2. Spice vinegar with cloves, mace, mustard seed, and sugar.

  3. Boil for 6 to 8 minutes.

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. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The main vegetable that is pickled and turned green during the heating process.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the brining stage.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers firm up and keep their green colour during heating.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the spiced vinegar, balancing its sharpness.

The step that matters

Heating the cucumbers gently. Heating over moderate heat for several hours keeps the cucumbers from turning soft or dull. Boiling hard can break down their texture, so the cook must watch the colour and repeat gently if needed.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cabbage, clove, mustard, 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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