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Dessert

Dill Pickles

A pickle made with cucumbers, dill, alum, salt, water, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Dill and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 530 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dill Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jars

  1. Place dill in the bottoms of two quart jars.

  2. Wash the cucumbers and fill the jars.

  3. Add ½ cup of alum to each jar.

Make and add the brine

  1. Boil 9 cups of water with 1 cup of coarse salt until dissolved.

  2. Let the brine cool, then mix in 1 cup of cider vinegar for every 3 cups of brine.

  3. Pour the brine over the cucumbers in the jars and seal them.

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

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

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Dill + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together659 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cucumber + cidertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Dill
Adds the characteristic herbal aroma and flavor of dill pickles.
Medium-sized cucumbers
Form the body of the pickles and provide the crisp texture once brined.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during brining.
Coarse salt
Seasons the brine and draws water out of the cucumbers, aiding preservation.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity and tang that give the pickles their sour flavor.

The step that matters

Let the brine cool before adding the vinegar. Hot brine can drive off vinegar's sharp aroma and acidity, so cooling it first keeps the tang the pickles are meant to have.

Swap the dill

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Dillthe original
  3. Peppermintfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cider, 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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