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Cucumber Pickles

A preserved cucumber dish flavored with vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Layer and spice

  1. Slice the peppers, onions, and horseradish. Place them in jars with the cucumbers.

  2. Combine the spices and sugar in the vinegar, scald it, and pour it over the cucumbers.

Brine overnight

  1. Make a brine that will float an egg and leave the cucumbers in it overnight.

Scald and pack

  1. Drain the cucumbers and scald them in a mixture of 1 quart vinegar and 1 quart water with alum the size of a hickory nut dissolved in it.

  2. Drain again and pack the cucumbers into jars.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The main vegetable, which softens in brine and takes on the pickling flavors.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp, tangy taste.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Contributes a mild, pungent flavor that defines the pickling spice blend.
Alum (in the method)
Helps firm the cucumber tissue so the pickles stay crisper.
Cinnamon stick
Adds warm aroma and sweet spice notes to the pickling liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, sugar, pepper, horseradish, mustard, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar, pepper, horseradish, mustard, cinnamon. 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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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