Skip to main content
Main

Crisp Cucumber Pickles

Pickles made from small cucumbers, brine, cider vinegar, ginger, peppers, and horseradish, boiled briefly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Crisp Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Select small, long cucumbers of uniform size and wash them with a cloth to remove small spines.

  2. Pour boiling hot strong brine over the cucumbers, cover closely, and let stand overnight.

  3. Drain the cucumbers in a colander and let them dry on a cloth.

Make and seal the pickles

  1. Make a pickle with the best cider vinegar, a little ginger root, four small peppers, and a little horseradish root.

  2. When the pickles boil, add the cucumbers, cover, and boil quickly for three minutes.

  3. Seal hot in jars.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together973 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 pickle itself; their firm flesh is what the brine and vinegar act on.
Strong brine
Draws salt into the cucumbers, firming the flesh and seasoning them before pickling.
Best cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickle its sharp, sour flavour and preserves it.
Ginger root
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the pickle liquid.
Horseradish root
Adds a pungent, sharp aroma and heat to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Pour boiling hot brine and let stand overnight. The brine must be boiling hot and the cucumbers covered closely so they absorb salt and stay in the liquid. This firms the flesh so it stays crisp through the later boiling.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cider, vinegar, pepper, horseradish. 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.

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesHam in CiderHam in Cider10 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes