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Pickles

Pickles made by boiling cucumbers in cider vinegar with salt and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Wash and drain cucumbers in a sieve without breaking the prickles.

  2. Place cucumbers in a jar.

  3. Pour boiling cider vinegar over cucumbers.

  4. Cover jar tightly.

Spice and transfer

  1. Transfer cucumbers from the jar to a new jar.

  2. Add fresh vinegar, a little coarse sea salt, and a bag of spices to the new jar.

  3. Boil the vinegar from the first jar again.

  4. Pour the boiled vinegar over the fresh cucumbers.

  5. Transfer the cucumbers to the larger jar.

Scald and store

  1. Heat the boiled vinegar in a brass or bell-metal kettle.

  2. Add more vinegar if needed.

  3. Scald the pickles for a few minutes.

  4. Remove pickles with a large skimmer.

  5. Drain the pickles.

  6. Return them to the jar of spiced vinegar.

  7. Check the pickles occasionally.

  8. Add more vinegar if necessary.

  9. Keep them covered tightly.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Cucumber + cidertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp body that the vinegar brine softens and flavours as it stands.
Cider vinegar
Acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickles their sharp, tangy flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the brine and helps draw water out of the cucumbers for a firmer texture.

The step that matters

Scald the pickles for a few minutes. Heating the pickles in hot vinegar softens them and drives the brine into the cucumbers, but overheating turns them mushy and dull. Keep the scalding brief and the vinegar just hot rather than boiling hard.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberthe original
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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