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Cucumber Pickle

Cucumber pickle made by boiling cucumbers, then soaking in vinegar with alum, salt, spices, horse radish, and grape leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Wash cucumbers and cover them with boiling water.

  2. Let them stand for one day and then wipe them dry.

  3. Measure the water to determine how much vinegar to use.

Pickle

  1. In a pot, heat the vinegar with alum, salt, and mixed spices.

  2. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the cucumbers and let them stand until the next morning.

  3. Repeat the boiling and pouring process three times.

Finish

  1. Slice a piece of horse radish and place it on top of the pickles.

  2. Wash grape leaves and cover the pickles with them.

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 + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Vinegar + radishtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cucumber + grapetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 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 pickles and provide the crisp, fresh body that the brine softens and flavors.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickles their sour flavor.
Powdered alum
Helps firm the cucumber tissue so the pickles stay crisp rather than soft.
Mixed spices
Add aroma and flavor to the hot vinegar brine.

The step that matters

Repeat the boiling and pouring process three times. Each hot brine pour draws water out of the cucumbers and replaces it with vinegar, so skipping or shortening repeats can leave the pickles under-flavored and less well preserved.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, horse, radish. 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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