Name: Cucumber Pickles
Ingredients: Cucumbers; 1 gallon white wine vinegar; 1 cup salt; 1 cup sugar; ½ cup mustard (Coleman's); Mixed spices (to taste)

Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash and dry the cucumbers.
Pack the cucumbers into Mason jars.

Brine and pack

In a bowl, mix the vinegar, salt, sugar, and mustard.
Pour the mixture over the cucumbers.
Add a large pinch of mixed spices to the 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.

Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,776 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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, staying crisp-textured when packed in the brine.
White wine vinegar: Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sugar: Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Mustard: Adds pungency and flavour depth to the brine.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, vinegar, sugar, mustard):

Horseradishfits better
Shallotfits better
Radishfits about as well
Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, sugar, mustard. 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.