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Pickled Cucumbers

A brined cucumber pickle prepared with fig and grape leaves, vinegar, sugar, alum, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pickled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Brine and leaves

  1. Make a strong brine and boil it in a bell metal skillet.

  2. Pour the brine over the cucumbers placed in a jar with layers of fig and grape leaves.

  3. Cover the jar closely and repeat the process the next day with fresh brine and leaves.

Scald and spice

  1. If the cucumbers are sufficiently green, scald them with a mixture of vinegar and water the following day.

  2. Let them sit for 24 hours.

  3. Boil vinegar with a small piece of alum, horseradish, garlic, brown sugar, turmeric, cloves, mace, nutmeg, allspice, celery seed, and cayenne pepper.

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

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

  2. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Fig + grapetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together323 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  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
Are the vegetable being preserved, and they take on flavor and crispness through the brine.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and brine.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Cloves
Contribute warm aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Scalding the cucumbers only when they are green enough. Cucumbers that are past their prime soften when scalded, so checking their firmness first helps keep them crisp. Acid and salt in the brine then preserve the texture over the sitting period.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, fig, vinegar, sugar, horseradish, garlic, turmeric):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, fig, vinegar, sugar, horseradish, garlic, 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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