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Pickled Cucumbers

A brined and vinegar pickled cucumber recipe using salt, peppercorns, allspice, ginger, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Wash the cucumbers or gherkins and place them in an earthenware pan.

  2. Cover them with boiling brine made from dissolving 2 ounces of salt in 1 pint of water.

  3. Cover the pan with a plate and let it sit for 24 hours.

  4. After 24 hours, remove the cucumbers from the brine, drain them in a colander, and dry them between two cloths.

Make and infuse the pickle

  1. Prepare the pickle by combining 2 quarts of white vinegar, 3 ounces of black peppercorns, 1 ounce of allspice berries, 1 ounce of sliced ginger, ¼ teaspoon of cayenne pepper, and 1 tablespoon of salt.

  2. Let the mixture infuse for 4 days.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cucumber + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together501 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 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 or gherkins
Salt brining firms the flesh so they stay crisp in the vinegar.
White vinegar
Acidity preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Black peppercorns
Release their pungent aroma into the vinegar during infusion.
Allspice berries
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling liquid.
Ginger
Adds a fresh, aromatic heat that flavours the infused vinegar.

The step that matters

Drying the cucumbers before pickling. Any water left on the cucumbers dilutes the vinegar and weakens its preserving effect, so they must be dried well before they go into the pickle.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, allspice, ginger, 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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