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Delicious Pickles

A cucumber pickle made with salt, mustard seeds, sugar, celery seed, olive oil, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Delicious Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the cucumbers

  1. Sprinkle cucumbers with salt and let sit overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the cucumbers well.

Season and pack

  1. Mix olive oil, white mustard seed, black mustard seed, sugar, and celery seed together.

  2. Combine the mixture with the cucumbers, ensuring every slice is coated.

  3. Pack the cucumbers in a large jar and cover with cider vinegar.

Rest

  1. Let sit for 10 days before using.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The main vegetable; salting draws out water so the slices stay crisp.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them before pickling.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that makes the pickle sour and preserves it.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour as the seeds release their heat in the liquid.
Olive oil
Carries the spices and coats the slices, adding richness and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Drain the cucumbers well in the morning. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers overnight. Leftover moisture dilutes the seasoning and vinegar and can make the pickles soggy, so thorough draining matters.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, coffee, olive, mustard, sugar, 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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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