Skip to main content
Main

Spanish Pickles

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and spices, preserved in brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Spanish Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak the cucumbers in brine for 3 days until it can float an egg.

  2. Slice the onions the day before.

  3. Chop the cabbage and tomatoes the day before.

  4. Sprinkle with ½ pint of salt.

  5. Squeeze the brine from the cucumbers.

  6. Wipe the cucumbers.

  7. Peel the cucumbers.

  8. Slice the cucumbers.

Cook and bottle

  1. Simmer all ingredients together in a kettle for 30 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 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
Brined to firm and season the pickle's main vegetable before cooking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar-free sharpness and helps preserve texture.
White mustard seed
Provides pungent, sharp flavour that deepens during simmering.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour and earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Soak the cucumbers in brine until they float an egg. Brine strength controls how much salt and water the cucumbers take up. If the brine is too weak, the cucumbers stay soft and may spoil; checking that an egg floats gives a consistent salt level before the cucumbers are used.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, mustard, turmeric, cabbage, celery, onion, sugar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, turmeric, cabbage, celery, onion, sugar. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipes