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Vinegar Pickles

A vinegar-based pickle made with cucumbers, onions, spices, and cold vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Vinegar Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle cucumbers and onions with salt and let them stand for 24 hours.

  2. Drain the cucumbers and onions.

Pack and cover

  1. Layer cucumbers and onions in a jar, alternating with spices.

  2. Pour enough cold vinegar over the layers to cover them.

  3. Place a small bag filled with mustard seed on top.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cucumber + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

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

  3. Horseradish + dilltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 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

Small cucumbers
Provide the main body and crisp texture of the pickles.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cucumbers and onions, firming them for pickling.
Cold vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and flavours the pickles.
Pearl onions
Add sharp, sweet flavour and a firm bite to the jar.

The step that matters

Salting for 24 hours. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and onions. Draining afterwards removes that liquid, which keeps the pickles crisp and stops the vinegar brine from being diluted.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, horseradish, ginger, clove, dill, grape):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, horseradish, ginger, clove, dill, grape. 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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