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Making Pickles

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 ↓

Making Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Clean the cucumbers and place them in stone jars.

  2. Dissolve 1 quart of coarse sea salt in a pail of boiling water.

  3. Pour the hot saltwater over the cucumbers.

  4. Cover the jars tightly.

  5. Let sit for 24 hours.

Pickle

  1. Drain the cucumbers in a basket.

  2. Boil enough best cider vinegar to cover the cucumbers.

  3. Wash the jars.

  4. Place the cucumbers back in the jars.

  5. Pour the hot vinegar over them.

  6. Cover the jars with cabbage leaves.

  7. Seal the jars tightly.

  8. Let sit for 48 hours.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 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

Very small cucumbers
Form the main body of the pickles, becoming crisp and tangy as they cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons the brine for preservation.
Best cider vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives them their sharp flavor.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot saltwater over the cucumbers. The brine must be hot enough to dissolve the salt fully and be poured over the cucumbers while they are covered in it, so the salt penetrates evenly during the 24-hour soak.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cider, vinegar, cabbage, onion, horseradish, mustard. 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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