Skip to main content
Main

To Pickle Cucumbers

A method of pickling cucumbers using salt, water, vinegar, lemon, ginger, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Soak cucumbers in a mixture of salt and water for 9 days, then remove them.

  2. Place cucumbers in cabbage leaves over a fire to green them.

  3. Transfer cucumbers to cold water.

  4. Let cucumbers sit for 3 days, changing the water frequently.

Make the vinegar

  1. Scald and skim vinegar.

  2. Pour scalded vinegar over cucumbers while hot.

  3. Boil the vinegar mixture 9 or 10 times until cucumbers are green and transparent.

Add the spiced vinegar

  1. Boil strong vinegar with 2 lemons, fresh ginger, and cloves in a bag in a new pot, then skim the mixture.

  2. Pour mixture over cucumbers.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cucumber + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,319 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The main vegetable, whose firm texture and green color change through soaking and repeated heating.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers during soaking, firming them for pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Lemons
Add extra acidity and citrus aroma to the spiced vinegar.
Fresh ginger
Adds a warm, pungent aroma to the spiced vinegar.
Cloves
Add a warm, sweet spice aroma to the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Boiling the vinegar 9 or 10 times. Repeated heating of the vinegar is what turns the cucumbers green and transparent. Judge by their color and clarity rather than the count alone, since boiling too little leaves them pale and boiling too much can soften their texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, ginger, clove. 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 pickled cucumbers recipes

Sweet 28and Onions 10Oil 8Green 4 See all 231 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes