Name: Olive Oil Pickles
Ingredients: 125 medium cucumbers, sliced; 12 silver skin onions, sliced; 1 cup white mustard seed; ½ cup celery seed; ½ cup dill seed; 1 pint olive oil; 1 pint coarse sea salt; 1 quart cold vinegar

Why it works: Cucumber and dill match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 530 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Olive Oil Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Combine cucumbers, onions, mustard seed, celery seed, dill seed, olive oil, and salt in a large bowl, then stir well to mix all ingredients.
Cover and stir every day for several days.

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.

Cucumber + dilltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together530 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Mustard + dilltop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together560 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + dilltop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together382 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 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

Cucumbers: Form the bulk of the pickles and provide their crisp, watery texture.
Mustard seed: Adds sharp, pungent flavour that deepens as the seeds soak.
Olive oil: Adds fat and richness and coats the vegetables and seeds.
Silver skin onions: Contribute sharp, savoury aroma and flavour to the mixture.

Swap the onion

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

Lettucefits better
Horseradishfits better
Broccolifits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, celery, dill, olive, 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.