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Dill Pickles

A brine of water, vinegar, salt, and spices preserves cucumbers in a jar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Dill Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. In a large bowl, combine water, vinegar, salt, and tartaric acid.

  2. Add pepper, cloves, allspice, dill, horseradish, grape leaves, and bay leaves to the mixture.

Pack and ferment

  1. Layer cucumbers in a stone jar, sprinkling spices between each layer.

  2. Cover the jar tightly and weigh it down.

  3. Let the pickles sit to develop flavor.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Dill + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

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

  3. Dill + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + cucumbertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 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
Form the pickles themselves, absorbing brine flavor and firming as they cure.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sours the brine and helps preserve the pickles.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons the brine, helping control spoilage.
Dill
Contributes the characteristic aromatic herb flavor of dill pickles.

The step that matters

Keep the cucumbers fully submerged. Cucumbers exposed above the brine can soften and spoil, since air encourages mold and bacteria growth. Weighing the jar down keeps every piece under the liquid while the flavor develops.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, clove, allspice, dill, horseradish, cucumber):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, clove, allspice, dill, horseradish, cucumber. 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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