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Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber dish with horse-radish, pepper, onion, spices, sugar, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the cucumbers in salt water for one day and night.

  2. In a large bowl, combine horse-radish, black pepper, red peppers, onions, mace, cloves, allspice, mustard seed, celery seed, sugar, and ginger, then mix well and add the soaked cucumbers.

Pickle

  1. Store in a jar and let it pickle.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The main vegetable, which absorbs the brine and the spiced seasoning as it pickles.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp, spicy flavors of the seasonings.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavor to the pickle.
Allspice
Adds a warm, aromatic flavor to the pickling mixture.
Onions
Add savory flavor and aroma to the seasoning mixture.
Red peppers
Add heat and color to the seasoning mixture.

The step that matters

Soaking the cucumbers in salt water. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and firms their texture, so soaking for the full time helps them stay crisp rather than soft once pickled.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, horse, radish, pepper, onion, clove, allspice):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, horse, radish, pepper, onion, clove, allspice. 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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