Skip to main content
Main

Cucumber Pickles

A method for preserving cucumbers in a vinegar and spice brine.

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 ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Make a weak brine with water and salt.

  2. Soak cucumbers in hot brine for 24 hours or cold brine for 48 hours.

  3. Rinse and dry cucumbers with a cloth.

Heat and pack

  1. In a brass kettle, combine vinegar and alum.

  2. Add cucumbers and heat slowly, turning frequently.

  3. Once heated through, transfer cucumbers to a crock.

  4. Bring the vinegar to a boil.

  5. Pour boiled vinegar over the pickles and let them sit for at least 24 hours.

  6. Drain off the vinegar and discard it.

Spice and finish

  1. Divide mustard seed, cloves, celery seed, cinnamon, green pepper, horseradish, and sugar into small muslin bags.

  2. Scald vinegar with the muslin bags of spices.

  3. Pour the spiced vinegar over the pickles.

  4. Let the vinegar cool before pouring it over the pickles for crunchier pickles.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  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
The main vegetable; their firm flesh becomes the crisp pickle texture.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that flavours and helps preserve the pickles.
Alum
Helps firm the cucumber flesh so the pickles stay crisp.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour to the spiced vinegar.
Cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the vinegar.
Sugar
Adds optional sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar.

The step that matters

Heat the cucumbers slowly and turn them often. Slow, even heating keeps the cucumbers from overcooking and going soft. Turning them helps the heat reach all surfaces evenly, so the texture stays firm.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, mustard, clove, cinnamon, pepper, 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 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesHorseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes