Why it works: Walnut and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 380 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Brine Pickles
Ingredients
Directions
Make the brine
Make a brine with rain water and enough coarse sea salt to float an egg.
Add a piece of alum and boil the mixture.
Let the brine cool, then pour it into earthen jars.
Pickle and refresh
Wash and add cucumbers to the jars, ensuring they are fully submerged in the brine.
When ready to use, pour boiling water over the cucumbers once a day until they are fresh enough for vinegar.
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.
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Walnut + cucumbertop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together380 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cucumbers
- The vegetable being preserved; brining draws in salt and firms the flesh for pickling.
- Coarse sea salt
- Dissolved in the water to form the brine that preserves and seasons the cucumbers.
- Alum
- Added to the brine to help keep cucumbers firm and crisp.
The step that matters
Keeping the cucumbers fully submerged in the brine. Cucumbers exposed to air can soften and spoil. Keeping every piece under the brine limits contact with air and helps the salt preserve them evenly.
“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.
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