Skip to main content
Main

Ftckled Cucumbers

Cucumbers pickled in a brine of salt, vinegar, spices, and alum, then stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Ftckled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Place cucumbers in a wooden or stone vessel and cover with boiling hot water mixed with strong salt.

  2. Put a weight on top to keep them submerged for three days.

  3. After three days, pour off the liquid, boil it, and pour it back over the cucumbers.

  4. Let them sit for another three days.

Soak and pickle

  1. Remove cucumbers and soak them overnight in plain cold water.

  2. The next day, heat the cucumbers without boiling them, adding 1 tablespoon of alum for every gallon of vinegar.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon each of mace, cinnamon, peppercorns, mustard seed, and grated horseradish, plus 1 teaspoon of turmeric.

  4. Pour in the vinegar and store in a dry place.

Cover and store

  1. Fold a double piece of linen and a thick brown paper to cover the jars tightly.

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. Cinnamon + turmerictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 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
Main vegetable that becomes firm and crisp after brining and pickling.
Strong salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and helps preserve them during the brine.
Vinegar
Acid that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm while they are heated in the pickling liquid.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Heating the cucumbers without boiling them. Boiling softens cucumber flesh and makes it mushy, while gentle heat keeps it firm. Alum added at this stage also helps preserve crispness.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, cinnamon, mustard, horseradish, turmeric):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, cinnamon, mustard, horseradish, turmeric. 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 pickled cucumbers recipes

Sweet 28and Onions 10Oil 8Green 4 See all 231 →

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes