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Fresh Cucumber Pickles

A method of pickling small cucumbers in salt, water, and cider vinegar with horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Fresh Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Place small cucumbers of uniform size in a stone crock.

  2. Pour boiling water over the cucumbers to cover them.

  3. Add a large handful of coarse sea salt.

  4. Let the cucumbers stand overnight.

  5. Drain the water in the morning.

  6. Pour more boiling water and the same quantity of salt over the cucumbers.

  7. Let them stand until the next morning.

Finish and pack

  1. Drain the water, wash the pickles in clear water, and dry with a towel.

  2. Put the pickles back in the crock and pour boiling cider vinegar over them.

  3. Add small horseradish roots to the crock.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cucumber + cidertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers
Form the pickles themselves, becoming crisp and firm as they cure in the brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them, firming their texture during curing.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickles their sour flavour and helps preserve them.
Horseradish roots
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and flavour to the pickles.

The step that matters

Pouring the second batch of boiling water and salt. The second brine must match the first in salt amount and the cucumbers must stand fully covered. Under-salting or letting them float exposed lets the pickles soften or spoil before the vinegar is added.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cider, 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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