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Buckeye Pickles

A pickle made by pickling green cucumbers with salt, mustard seed, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Buckeye Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the cucumbers, removing all large seeds.

  2. Add the salt and stir; let the mixture stand overnight.

Finish and serve

  1. In the morning, press the mixture dry using a jelly bag.

  2. Add the mustard seed and enough vinegar to achieve a consistency similar to chopped pickles. Mix thoroughly and it's ready to use.

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

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Large green cucumbers
Provide the bulk of the relish and its crisp, fresh texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, firming them and concentrating their flavour.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour and a bit of crunch to the relish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and tang and sets the final consistency of the relish.

The step that matters

Press the mixture dry in the morning. Salt has drawn out a lot of liquid overnight. Pressing it well removes that excess water, so the relish stays thick and does not become watery once vinegar is added.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, 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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