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Salad

Kansas Pickle

A pickled cucumber and onion relish seasoned with mustard seeds and celery seed in oil and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Kansas Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice cucumbers with skins on and slice the onions.

  2. Layer cucumbers and onions in a container, sprinkling with salt.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 3 hours, then drain well.

Make the brine and pack

  1. In a bowl, combine salad oil, white mustard seed, black mustard seed, celery seed, and cold vinegar.

  2. Stir well and pour over the pickles, then cover 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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 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
Form the main body of the pickle, staying crisp when kept cold and covered.
Onions
Add sharpness and aroma that mellow during the long soak.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and onions, firming their texture before pickling.
Cold vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their tang.
White mustard seed
Contributes mild, sharp pungency to the pickling liquid.
Salad oil
Adds fat that carries the spices and coats the vegetables.

The step that matters

Draining after the salt stand. The vegetables release a lot of liquid during the 3-hour salting. Draining it well keeps the pickles crisp and stops the cold vinegar mixture from being watered down.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, celery, vinegar. 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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