Skip to main content
Main

Cucumber Pickles

Cucumbers preserved by brining with salt and boiling water, then sealed with boiling vinegar and spices for a month.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Wash the cucumbers and place them in a large container.

  2. Add 1 pint of coarse sea salt and pour boiling water over the cucumbers to cover them completely.

  3. Cover the container tightly to prevent steam from escaping and let it sit for 24 hours.

Pack and pickle

  1. After 24 hours, remove the cucumbers and wipe them dry without breaking the skin.

  2. Place the cucumbers in a jar for storage.

  3. Pour boiling vinegar over the cucumbers and add your preferred spices.

  4. Seal the jar tightly and let it sit for one month before using.

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 + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 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
Form the main body of the pickles, becoming crisp and firm as they are brined and then pickled.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the brining stage.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that preserves the cucumbers and defines the pickle flavour.

The step that matters

Sealing the container during the first brine. Covering the container tightly keeps steam in and the cucumbers submerged, so they brine evenly over the full 24 hours instead of drying or softening unevenly.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes