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Sliced Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber recipe using salt, vinegar, alum, horseradish, mustard, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 ↓

Sliced Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Place cucumbers in a jar or pail.

  2. Cover with boiling water and salt.

  3. Cover tightly and repeat for three mornings.

Make the vinegar syrup

  1. On the fourth morning, scald enough cider vinegar to cover the cucumbers.

  2. Add alum and horseradish to the vinegar.

  3. Tie mustard, cloves, and cinnamon in a small muslin bag and add to the vinegar.

Pack and seal

  1. Slice cucumbers into ½ inch thick pieces.

  2. Place sliced cucumbers in glass jars.

  3. Pour the scalding vinegar mixture over the cucumbers.

  4. Seal tightly.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

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

  5. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 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
Main vegetable; salting and brining firm the flesh so it stays crisp in the vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the repeated brining.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavour.
Horseradish root
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that mellows during the pickling.
Mustard seeds
Contribute a sharp, slightly bitter pungency that infuses into the vinegar.

The step that matters

Scalding the vinegar. The vinegar must be hot enough to pour over the cucumbers so the spices and alum infuse, but not boiled hard, which can drive off acidity and aroma. Keeping the cucumbers covered and sealed while hot helps the jars stay preserved.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cider, vinegar, horseradish, mustard, clove, cinnamon. 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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