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Cucumber Pickles

A method of pickling cucumbers with salt, vinegar, mustard seed, celery seed, alum, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak cucumbers overnight in salt water.

  2. In the morning, place them in a brass kettle and cover with cider vinegar.

  3. Add mustard seed and celery seed to taste.

  4. Add a piece of alum the size of a pea and a few slices of horse-radish.

Cook and bottle

  1. Heat until cucumbers turn green, then remove immediately.

  2. Pour contents out of the kettle and bottle the pickles.

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. Mustard + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The main vegetable that becomes the pickle, taking on flavor and a firm crunch from the brine.
Cider vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its tang.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during heating.

The step that matters

Heat until cucumbers turn green, then remove immediately. Heating is what turns the cucumbers green, and holding them too long over heat softens them and dulls the texture. Removing them as soon as the color changes keeps them firmer.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cider, vinegar, mustard, 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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