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Dill Pickles

Pickled cucumbers with dill, salt, vinegar, and optional aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Dill Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Soak cucumbers in salt water overnight.

  2. Wipe each cucumber dry and discard any that are soft.

Pack and brine

  1. Layer cucumbers in a wooden vessel with grape leaves, green grapes, whole peppers, bay leaves, ginger, cloves, horseradish, and dill.

  2. Boil water to cover the pickles, using 1 pound of salt for every 6 quarts of water and 1 cup of vinegar. Pour the cooled brine over the cucumbers.

  3. Seal the vessel tightly and store it properly to keep pickles 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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cucumber + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

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

  3. Horseradish + dilltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Pepper + dilltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,630 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

Cucumbers
Form the pickles themselves; firm, unbruised fruit stays crisp while it ferments in brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and keeps spoilage microbes in check during brining.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps keep the brine preserving.
Dill
Contributes the characteristic aroma of dill pickles.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma to the brine and pickles.

The step that matters

Wipe the cucumbers dry and discard soft ones. Soft cucumbers have already started to break down and can spoil the whole vessel, while surface moisture can encourage unwanted growth. Only firm, dry cucumbers keep a good crunch and store safely.

Swap the grape

The recipe marks grape as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, ginger, clove, horseradish, dill, vinegar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, ginger, clove, horseradish, dill, 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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