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Cucumber Pickles in Oil

Pickled cucumbers preserved in oil with mustard and celery seeds.

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

Cucumber Pickles in Oil

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice cucumbers very thin without peeling.

  2. Sprinkle with salt, cover with water, and let stand overnight.

  3. Drain cucumbers in the morning.

Make the pickles

  1. Add mustard seed, celery seed, olive oil, and vinegar to the cucumbers.

  2. If desired, mix in thinly sliced onions.

  3. Store in a sealed container.

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

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

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 the salt draws out and the oil and vinegar flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers through osmosis, firming them and seasoning the pickles.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that develops as the seeds sit in the liquid.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness and coats the slices, carrying flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickles their tang and helps preserve them.

The step that matters

Drain cucumbers in the morning. Salting draws water out of the cucumbers; if they are not drained well, excess liquid dilutes the vinegar and oil and leaves the pickles soggy and watery.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, mustard, celery, olive, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, celery, olive, vinegar. 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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