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Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber dish made with vinegar, alum, horseradish, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Pack and cover

  1. Pack cucumbers tightly in a jar.

  2. Add enough vinegar to cover the pickles.

Season and seal

  1. Stir in alum, horseradish, and sugar.

  2. Heat the mixture and pour it over the pickles.

  3. Heat again until hot, then seal the jar.

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

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

  2. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cucumber + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the pickles themselves, providing the crisp, firm body that the brine surrounds.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickles their sour flavor.
Alum
Helps cucumbers stay firm and crisp during pickling.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Heat again until hot, then seal the jar.. Heating the brine until hot helps the jar seal and keeps the pickles safely preserved. Sealing while hot creates a vacuum as the contents cool, which helps the pickles keep.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar. 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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