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To Pickle Gherkins

A method for pickling small cucumbers or gherkins using salt, vinegar, water, and alum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 722 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pickle Gherkins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. On a dry day, gather small cucumbers or gherkins.

  2. Soak them in cold salt-and-water for 4 days, placing a cabbage leaf on top to keep them submerged.

  3. Drain the cucumbers and place them in a clean brass pan with vine or cabbage leaves at the bottom.

Make the pickle

  1. Cover the cucumbers with a mixture of equal parts vinegar and water, adding a little pounded alum and more leaves on top.

  2. Heat the mixture until it is scalding hot, then remove the pan and let it cool slightly.

  3. Repeat heating the mixture several times throughout the day.

  4. At night, place the cucumbers in a basin with fresh leaves and the same liquid to soak overnight.

  5. The next morning, heat the cucumbers twice with fresh leaves under and over them, then drain.

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 + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 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. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers or gherkins
Form the pickles themselves, providing the crisp body that the brine and heating act upon.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Pounded alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp through repeated heating.

The step that matters

Repeated heating in the vinegar liquid. Heating the cucumbers to scalding hot without boiling them to mush takes care. Over-heating softens the flesh, while too little heat leaves the pickle under-penetrated and less safely preserved. Keeping the leaves between the cucumbers and the pan helps them stay evenly covered and firm.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, 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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