Skip to main content
Dessert

To Pickle Gherkins

A method for pickling young gherkins using salt, alum, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,928 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

To Pickle Gherkins

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and soak

  1. Spread the gherkins on dishes and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let them sit for a week with a small bit of alum.

  3. Drain the gherkins and place them in a jar.

Pickle

  1. Pour boiling vinegar over them.

  2. Set the jar near the fire and cover with vine leaves.

  3. If they are not a good green, pour the vinegar into another jar.

  4. Heat the vinegar over the hot hearth until it is too hot to bear your hand, but not boiling.

  5. Pour it over the gherkins again and cover with fresh leaves.

  6. Repeat this process until the gherkins reach the desired color.

Add spices

  1. If you prefer spices, place allspice, mace, and mustard seed in a thin muslin bag.

  2. Use rather less than half an ounce of allspice and mace, and one ounce of mustard seed for every quart of vinegar.

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. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Gherkins
Main vegetable that becomes the pickle; salting and vinegar firm and preserve its texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the gherkins, firming them and preparing them to take up vinegar.
Alum
Helps the gherkins stay firm and crisp during long soaking.
Boiling vinegar
Acidity that preserves the gherkins and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Allspice
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Heating the vinegar to the right temperature. Vinegar that is too hot can soften the gherkins and spoil their colour, while vinegar that is cool may not penetrate well. Warm, not boiling, vinegar keeps the gherkins firm and green while still letting the flavour soak in.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, allspice, mustard. 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes