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To Pickle Cucumbers and Onions Sliced

A method for pickling sliced cucumbers and onions with salt, vinegar, pepper, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pickle Cucumbers and Onions Sliced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cucumbers and onions thickly.

  2. Sprinkle salt over the slices and let them sit overnight.

  3. Drain the vegetables for 5-6 hours.

Pickle

  1. Place them in a stone jar and pour boiling vinegar over them.

  2. Keep the jar in a warm place.

  3. Repeat pouring boiling vinegar over them until they turn green.

  4. Add pepper and ginger the last time you pour the vinegar.

  5. Seal the jars tightly.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 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. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  4. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together973 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, bulky body of the pickle once salted and drained.
Onions
Add pungent flavor that mellows during pickling and contributes sharpness to the brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming their texture before pickling.
Boiling vinegar
Acidifies the vegetables, preserving them and giving the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Repeated pouring of boiling vinegar. Each pour of boiling vinegar helps the vegetables reach full acidity and color change; stopping early can leave them underpickled and less stable.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, vinegar, pepper. 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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