Skip to main content
Drink

Green Sour Pickles

Pickles made by layering cucumbers or tomatoes with salt, brining, scalding, and vinegar with peppers, cloves, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Green Sour Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. In a stone jar, layer the sliced cucumbers or tomatoes with salt.

  2. Cover with cold water and let stand overnight.

Scald and pickle

  1. In the morning, drain off the brine and scald the vegetables.

  2. Pour the scalded vinegar over the pickles, adding the peppers, cloves, and horseradish.

  3. Let stand overnight, then drain and store in jars.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Cucumber + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,319 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

Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables and seasons them during the overnight brine.
Cucumbers or green tomatoes
Form the main body of the pickles and absorb the brine and vinegar flavor.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that defines the pickles and helps preserve them.
Green or red peppers
Add flavor and color to the pickles as they steep in the vinegar.
Whole cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Draining off the brine before scalding. Rinsing away the salty brine before scalding keeps the pickles from becoming overly salty, while the vegetables stay firm enough to hold their shape in the vinegar.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesCucumber PicklesCucumber Pickles25 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipes