Name: Cucumber Pickle
Ingredients: 1 gallon cucumbers; water; vinegar; salt; spices

Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brine

Wash and slice the cucumbers.
Prepare a brine with water, vinegar, and salt.
Add spices to the brine as desired.

Jar and rest

Pour the brine over the cucumbers in a jar.
Seal the jar and let it sit for several weeks before using.

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.

Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers: Form the bulk of the pickles and provide the crisp texture.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that gives the pickles their tang and helps preserve them.
Spices: Add aroma and flavor to the brine.

“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.