Skip to main content

To Pickle Cucumbers

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Pickle Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak cucumbers in a strong saltwater brine for 40 days.

  2. Rub cucumbers with a coarse cloth.

  3. Pack cucumbers into jars, adding black pepper, mace, and horseradish.

  4. Boil enough vinegar to cover the cucumbers, adding turmeric to maintain their green color.

  5. Pour the hot vinegar over the cucumbers.

  6. Repeat the boiling and pouring process three times, allowing 2-3 days between each boiling.

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. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, horseradish, vinegar, turmeric. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More pickled cucumbers recipes

Sweet 28and Onions 10Oil 8Green 4 See all 231 →

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes