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Small Cucumber Pickles

A pickle recipe using small cucumbers, vinegar, spices, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Small Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pour boiling hot water over the cucumbers and let them stand for 24 hours.

  2. Wipe the cucumbers dry and pack them into jars.

Make and add the brine

  1. Boil the vinegar, cloves, allspice, mustard seed, alum, salt, and sugar together.

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the pickles in the jars.

  3. Add a few small pieces of horseradish on top to prevent molding.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Salt
Seasons the brine and helps draw flavor into the cucumbers.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during pickling.
Whole mustard seed
Adds a pungent, earthy flavor to the brine.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling brine over the pickles. The brine must be fully boiling when poured so it penetrates the cucumbers and begins preserving them. A lukewarm brine can leave the pickles less safe and more prone to spoilage.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cider, vinegar, allspice, mustard, sugar, horseradish):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cider, vinegar, allspice, mustard, sugar, horseradish. 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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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