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Oil Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber and onion mixture preserved in olive oil 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 the vegetables

  1. Layer the cucumbers and onions in a colander, sprinkling with salt.

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

Season and pack

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

  2. Add the drained cucumbers and onions, and mix well.

  3. Pack 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, bulk body of the pickle.
Onions
Add pungent flavour and crunch that mellows during the pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and onions, firming them for crisp texture.
Olive oil
Coats the vegetables, adding fat and richness and carrying the spice flavours.
Cold vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens their flavour.

The step that matters

Drain the salted vegetables fully. Salt pulls water out of the cucumbers and onions. If they are not drained well, the excess liquid dilutes the vinegar and the pickles turn soft and watery instead of crisp.

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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