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Cucumber Pickles

A pickle preparation involving boiling, brining, and seasoning with vinegar, sugar, mustard, spices, and optional onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pickles

  1. Pour boiling water over the pickles.

  2. Drain the pickles when cold.

  3. Sprinkle ½ pint of dry salt over the pickles.

  4. Cover the pickles with boiling water.

  5. Drain off the brine.

  6. Bring the brine to a boil.

  7. Pour the boiled brine over the pickles.

  8. Cover the pickles with grape leaves.

  9. Drain the pickles.

  10. Cover the pickles with weak vinegar.

  11. Keep the pickles hot (without boiling) for 5-6 hours.

Pack the jars

  1. Wipe the pickles dry.

  2. Place the pickles in jars.

  3. Prepare the vinegar mixture by adding 2 pounds of brown sugar, 1 pound of black mustard seed, ½ ounce of allspice, mace, celery seed, horseradish, red pepper, black pepper, cinnamon, and small onions (if desired) to 1 gallon of vinegar.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

White wine vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Black mustard seed
Adds pungent, earthy flavor to the vinegar mixture.
Dry salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them, helping them stay firm.

The step that matters

Keep the pickles hot without boiling. Holding them just below a boil lets the salty, vinegary brine penetrate gradually. A full boil would soften the cucumbers and leave them limp and mushy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, vinegar, sugar, mustard, allspice, celery, horseradish):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, sugar, mustard, allspice, celery, 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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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