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Preserve

Fresh Cucumber Pickles

A method of pickling cucumbers in salt water and cider vinegar with horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fresh Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Place the cucumbers in a stone crock.

  2. Pour boiling water over the cucumbers to cover them.

  3. Add a large handful of coarse sea salt.

  4. Let the cucumbers stand overnight.

  5. Drain off the water in the morning.

  6. Pour on more boiling water.

  7. Add the same quantity of salt.

  8. Let them stand until the next morning.

  9. Drain off the water.

Rinse and pack

  1. Wash the pickles in clear water.

  2. Dry with a towel.

  3. Put the pickles back in the crock.

Pickle and store

  1. Pour on boiling cider vinegar.

  2. Add small horseradish roots.

  3. Store in a common stone crock for winter.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cucumber + cidertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers of uniform size
Form the pickles themselves, so uniform size lets them cure and firm evenly.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and firms their texture while flavouring the brine.
Cider vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their tang.
Horseradish roots
Adds a pungent, aromatic flavour that carries into the pickles as they stand.

The step that matters

Draining and re-salting the brine. Each boiling-water and salt round must be fully drained before the next is added, so the cucumbers lose water and firm up rather than soften in a diluted brine.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cider, 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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