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Small Cucumber Pickles

Pickled small cucumbers preserved in a brine and vinegar with onion, cloves, mustard seed, mace, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Small Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Wash and wipe the cucumbers carefully. Place them in jars.

  2. In a porcelain-lined kettle, bring enough water to a boil to cover the cucumbers. Stir in enough salt to create a brine that will float an egg.

  3. Pour the boiling brine over the cucumbers and let them stand for 24 hours.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Remove the cucumbers, wipe each one carefully without bruising, and place them in clean jars.

  2. In a porcelain kettle, add enough vinegar to cover the cucumbers, along with the sliced onion, cloves, mustard seed, and mace. Bring this mixture to a boil and pour it over the pickles.

  3. Add the chopped horseradish and let the mixture cool.

Rest and store

  1. The pickles will be ready to use in two weeks and will keep all winter.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp body that the brine and vinegar transform into pickles.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them through the brine.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavor.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, aromatic flavor to the pickling liquid.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that deepens as the pickles rest.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling brine over the cucumbers. The brine must be made with enough salt to float an egg, so it is strong enough to draw water from the cucumbers and keep them firm. Weak brine can leave pickles soft.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, egg, vinegar, onion, clove, mustard, horseradish):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, egg, vinegar, onion, clove, mustard, horseradish. 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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