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Oil Pickles

Pickled cucumbers and onions preserved in olive oil with mustard and celery seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Oil Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash small cucumbers and dry them to remove black spots.

  2. Sprinkle cucumbers with plenty of salt and let them drain overnight.

  3. In another dish, sprinkle small onions (one-fourth the amount of cucumbers) with salt and let them drain overnight.

Combine and jar

  1. In the morning, mix cucumbers and onions with mustard seed, celery seed, vinegar, and olive oil.

  2. Use about 3 tablespoons of olive oil for a 2-quart jar.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers
Provide the main pickling body that stays crisp after salting and draining.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and onions, firming them and seasoning the pickles.
Small onions
Add sharp aroma and savory flavor that mellows during the pickling.
Best vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickles their tang and preserves them.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a fruity, rounded richness that carries the seasonings.

The step that matters

Draining the salted cucumbers overnight. Salt pulls water out of the cucumbers through osmosis. Too little salt or skipping the drain leaves them soft and watery, so the pickles lose crispness and the oil and vinegar dilute.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, mustard, celery, vinegar, olive):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, celery, vinegar, olive. 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.

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