Name: Good Cucumber Pickle
Ingredients: loose cucumber pickle; brown sugar; onion, thinly sliced; vinegar; white mustard seed; celery seed

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 ↓

Good Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the loose cucumber pickle.
In a jar, layer cucumbers, a thick layer of brown sugar, and a few pieces of thinly sliced onion.
Repeat the layers until the jar is filled.
Pour enough vinegar over the layers to cover them.
Add white mustard seed and celery seed for flavor.
Let the mixture stand until well seasoned.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Vinegar + mustardtop 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

Swap the onion

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

Horseradishfits better
Lettucefits better
Radishfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, sugar, vinegar, mustard, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.