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Dill Pickles

A pickle made by layering cucumbers with dill, spices, and a brine of water, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Dill Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the cucumbers and soak them in cold water for 2 hours.

Layer the jar

  1. Place a layer of grape leaves and dill in a large stone jar.

  2. Add a layer of cucumbers.

  3. Sprinkle with cloves, allspice, red pepper slices, and dill.

  4. Repeat layering until the jar is full, finishing with a layer of dill on top.

Brine and weight

  1. Make a brine with cold water and coarse sea salt until it can float an egg.

  2. Add cold water until the egg slowly sinks.

  3. Mix in 1 cup of vinegar.

  4. Pour the brine over the pickles.

  5. Cover with a cloth.

  6. Place a plate on top.

  7. Add a weight.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cucumber + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

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

  3. Dill + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,630 recipes

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Dill + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 and become crisp and tangy as they cure.
Vinegar
Adds sourness and acidity that give the pickles their tangy bite.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the brine and draws water out of the cucumbers while helping preserve them.
Dill
Contributes the herbal aroma that defines a dill pickle.
Grape leaves
Their natural tannins help the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during curing.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the brine and cucumbers.

The step that matters

Get the brine strength right with the egg test. Salt concentration controls how the cucumbers cure. A brine that is too weak may let spoilage microbes grow, while one that is too strong draws out too much moisture and makes the pickles limp and overly salty. Floating an egg gives a rough check of brine density.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, dill, clove, allspice, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, dill, clove, allspice, pepper, 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.

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