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Pickled Cucumbers

Pickled cucumbers preserved in a brine of water, salt, vinegar, alum, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pickled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. In a large pot, heat 3 gallons of water to boiling.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the cucumbers for four consecutive mornings.

  3. On the fifth morning, remove the brine.

Pickle

  1. Dissolve the alum in 1 gallon of boiling hot vinegar and pour it over the cucumbers to cover them.

  2. Add a few horseradish roots for flavor.

  3. In spring, you may replace the vinegar if needed.

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

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

  2. Butternut + horseradishtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + butternuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 softens and then turns crisp and tangy as it pickles.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Alum
Helps firm the cucumber flesh so the pickles stay crisp rather than soft.
Horseradish roots
Adds a pungent, sharp aroma and flavor to the pickling liquid.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cucumbers and seasons the brine.

The step that matters

Dissolve the alum fully in the boiling vinegar. Alum must be completely dissolved before the vinegar is poured over the cucumbers. Undissolved crystals can settle unevenly, leaving gritty spots and inconsistent firming across the batch.

Swap the butternut

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

  1. Butternutthe original
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Lentilsfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, 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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