Name: Pickled Cucumbers
Ingredients: 1 gallon best cider vinegar; 1 teacup salt; 2 red peppers, cut fine; ¼ pound white mustard seed; ¼ ounce ginger root; 1 piece alum the size of a butternut; 1 teacup horse-radish root, not grated

Why it works: Mustard and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 297 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pickled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash and wipe the cucumbers.
Place cucumbers in a stone jar.

Make the pickling liquid

In a pot, combine vinegar, salt, red peppers, mustard seed, ginger root, alum, and horse-radish.
Bring the mixture to a boil.

Pour and seal

Pour the hot mixture over the cucumbers.
Seal the jar 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.

Mustard + radishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together297 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Mustard + butternuttop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together529 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Ginger + radishtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together172 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cider vinegar: Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Salt: Draws moisture out of the cucumbers and seasons the brine.
White mustard seed: Adds pungent flavor that mellows as the pickle matures.
Horse-radish root: Contributes sharp, pungent heat that infuses the brine.
Alum: Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during pickling.

Swap the butternut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, pepper, mustard, ginger, horse, radish):

Beansfits better
Sesamefits better
Butternutthe original
Lentilsfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, pepper, mustard, ginger, horse, radish. 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.