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Flint Pickles

A preserved cucumber pickle made with brine, grape leaves, horseradish, onions, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, and celery seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Flint Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Wash the cucumbers.

  2. Place the cucumbers in jars.

  3. Make a brine with 1 teacup of salt and 1 gallon of water.

  4. Boil the brine and pour it over the cucumbers.

  5. Move the brine over the cucumbers for nine mornings.

  6. Boil the brine and pour it over the cucumbers each time.

  7. Wash the cucumbers in hot water.

  8. Let the cucumbers drain.

Pack and pickle

  1. Once cool, layer the cucumbers in stone jars with grape leaves, horseradish, and sliced onions if desired.

  2. Make a syrup with good vinegar and sugar to taste, adding a stick of cinnamon and a little celery seed.

  3. Boil the syrup and pour it over the pickles.

  4. Invert a plate or saucer on top and place a small weight on it.

  5. Tie up closely.

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 + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  2. Horseradish + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cinnamon + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Medium-sized cucumbers
Provide the crisp vegetable body that the brine and syrup flavour and preserve.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons the brine, firming the flesh.
Good vinegar
Adds sharp acidity to the syrup, which helps preserve the pickles and gives tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Grape leaves
Contribute tannins that help the cucumbers stay firm and crisp.

The step that matters

Boil the brine and pour it over the cucumbers each time. Repeatedly reheating the brine keeps it hot enough to limit spoilage microbes and keeps the cucumbers firm across the nine-day process. Letting the brine cool or skipping a renewal weakens that protection.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, grape, horseradish, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, celery):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, grape, horseradish, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, celery. 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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