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Cucumber Amd Onion Pickles

A pickled cucumber and onion relish made with vinegar, mustard seed, celery seed, cloves, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cucumber Amd Onion Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop and salt the cucumbers and onions separately.

  2. After 24 hours, squeeze out the brine and cover with weak vinegar overnight.

Pack and pickle

  1. Drain and pack in layers in a stone jar, sprinkling mustard seed, celery seed, and whole cloves between layers.

  2. Cover with good vinegar overnight.

  3. In the morning, drain and heat the vinegar with brown sugar.

  4. Pour the hot vinegar over the pickles and repeat this process twice before storing.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the main body of the pickles, releasing moisture when salted and firming as they cure.
Onions
Add pungent flavor that mellows during salting and soaking in vinegar.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the hot vinegar, balancing the sharpness of the pickling liquid.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, aromatic flavor to the pack between layers.
Celery seed
Adds a savory, aromatic flavor to the pickling layers.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the brine after 24 hours. Salt draws water out of the vegetables. Removing the brine thoroughly helps the pickles stay crisp and lets the vinegar penetrate rather than being diluted.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, mustard, celery, clove, sugar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, mustard, celery, clove, sugar. 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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