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Small Cucumber Pickle

A quick pickle of sliced cucumbers with mustard seeds, celery seed, olive oil, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Small Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the cucumbers

  1. Sprinkle the cucumbers with salt and let them stand overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the cucumbers well.

Season and cover

  1. Mix the mustard seeds, celery seed, olive oil, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add the mixture to the cucumbers and stir thoroughly.

  3. Cover the cucumbers with hot 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. 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. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, bulk body of the pickles.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, firming them and preparing them to take up flavor.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavor that infuses the pickles.
Olive oil
Carries the spice flavors and coats the cucumbers, adding richness.
Hot vinegar
Acidifies the pickles, giving the tangy flavor and preserving character.

The step that matters

Salting overnight. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers by osmosis. Draining well afterward removes that liquid so the pickles stay crisp rather than watery once dressed and covered with vinegar.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, coffee, olive, sugar, 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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