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Gherkin Pickles

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Dill and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 134 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Gherkin Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the pickles thoroughly 2 or 3 times.

  2. Make a brine with salt and water; leave pickles in brine for 3 days.

  3. Add salt until an egg floats just above the water's surface.

  4. On the third day, wash the pickles in clean water and dry each one with a clean towel.

  5. Place the pickles in jars with sticks of dill.

  6. Cover with boiled and cooled cider vinegar.

  7. Add a few sticks of horseradish 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. Dill + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Vinegar + dilltop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together659 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cider + horseradishtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together338 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the dill

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Dillthe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, horseradish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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