Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Pickeled Cucumbers
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the brine
Dissolve 1 pint of coarse sea salt in 6 quarts of boiling water.
Boil the brine and skim it until clear.
Wash 150 small cucumbers and soak them in the brine for 48 hours, covered.
Rinse and pack
Drain the cucumbers and soak them in cold water for 2 hours.
Drain the cucumbers again.
Place the cucumbers in a crock with the onion, horseradish, red peppers, and alum.
Spice and pickle
Fill a muslin bag with 1 cup of mixed spices.
Boil the spice bag in enough vinegar to cover the cucumbers for 10 minutes.
Add the spice bag to the crock with the cucumbers and vinegar.
On the third day, pour off the vinegar.
Reheat the vinegar.
Return the vinegar to the pickles.
Let the pickles sit for 3 weeks before using.
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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Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,832 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,874 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
-
Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,169 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
-
Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together640 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
-
Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,928 recipes
Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cucumbers
- Form the pickle itself; they firm and absorb flavour during the long brine soak.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them, helping them stay crisp.
- Vinegar
- Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavour.
- Mixed spices
- Supply the aromatic flavour of the pickling liquid, released by boiling in a bag.
- Alum
- Added in a small amount to help keep the cucumbers firm during pickling.
The step that matters
Boil the brine and skim it until clear. Skimming removes scum and impurities floating on the surface, so the brine stays clean and the cucumbers are not spoiled by off flavours during the long soak.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, clove, horseradish, pepper, celery, mustard, allspice):
- Lettucefits better
- Turnipfits better
- Shallotfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, clove, horseradish, pepper, celery, mustard, allspice. 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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