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Oil Cucumber Pickle

A quick cucumber pickle made with oil, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Oil Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Layer cucumbers and onions in a colander, sprinkling salt between layers.

  2. Place a heavy weight on top and let drain for 6 hours.

Make the pickle

  1. In a large pan, mix olive oil, celery seed, and black pepper.

  2. Add the drained cucumbers and onions to the mixture and toss well.

  3. Pack the mixture into Mason jars, fill with cold vinegar, and seal without cooking.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cucumber + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,745 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, bulky body of the pickle once salted and drained.
Onions
Add sharp flavour and aroma that mellows in the oil and vinegar.
Salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and onions, firming their texture.
Olive oil
Carries the celery seed and pepper flavour and coats the vegetables.
Cold vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the cucumbers and onions. Salt pulls out excess water; if the vegetables are not drained well, the extra moisture dilutes the vinegar and oil and leaves the pickle soft and watery.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, olive, celery, 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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