Skip to main content
Drink

Cucumber Pickles

Pickled cucumbers flavored with mustard seed, pepper, juniper berries, sugar, and vinegar.

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

Why it works: Mustard and cucumber 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

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Salt cucumbers in a brine strong enough to float an egg for 3 days.

Vinegar and bottle

  1. Pour scalding vinegar over the cucumbers 3 times.

  2. When ready to bottle, pour off the vinegar.

  3. Add cold vinegar mixed with ½ pound of ground mustard.

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 + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + cucumbertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 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 pickles themselves, firming and absorbing flavour during brining and vinegar soaking.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that carries through the cold vinegar mixture.
Scalding vinegar
Acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sour character.

The step that matters

Salt cucumbers in a brine strong enough to float an egg for 3 days. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers through osmosis, firming the flesh and making it less likely to turn soft later. The brine must be strong enough to keep the cucumbers well seasoned and protected while they cure over the full three days.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Radishfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, pepper, sugar, 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 →

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes