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Ripe Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using vinegar, water, sugar, salt, and optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Ripe Cucumber Pickles

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 ↓

Ripe Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and soak

  1. Pare and seed the cucumbers, then cut them lengthwise.

  2. Cover the cucumbers with vinegar and water and let them stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the cucumbers and place them in fresh vinegar.

Cook and seal

  1. Add 2 lbs of sugar and 1 tablespoon of salt for every quart of vinegar.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

  3. Seal in jars and add whole spices, mustard seed, or cayenne pepper if desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 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).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 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 bulk of the pickle and absorb the sweet-sour liquid, giving a firm, crisp bite.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that flavours the pickle and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 20 minutes. Boiling is timed to bring the liquid to temperature and dissolve the sugar and salt without overcooking. Prolonged boiling softens cucumber tissue, so the pickles can turn limp rather than crisp.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, sugar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Radishfits about as well
  4. Cauliflowerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar, pepper. 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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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