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Cucumbers, to Pickle

A simple cucumber pickle made with onions, vinegar, salt, mace, pepper, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cucumbers, to Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the vegetables

  1. Slice large cucumbers and place them in a pewter dish.

  2. Slice 2 large onions thinly and layer them with the cucumbers, adding a handful of coarse sea salt between each layer.

  3. Cover with another pewter dish and let stand for 24 hours.

  4. Drain the cucumbers in a colander and place them in a jar.

Pickle and seal

  1. Cover with white wine vinegar and let stand for 4 hours.

  2. Boil the vinegar with salt, then add mace, whole pepper, and sliced ginger.

  3. Pour the boiling vinegar over the cucumbers, cover tightly, and let cool.

  4. Once cool, seal the jar and they can be used in a few 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. 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

Large cucumbers
Provide the main crisp vegetable body that becomes tender-crisp and pickled.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and onions, firming texture and concentrating flavor.
White wine vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavor.
2 large onions
Add sharp aromatic flavor that mellows during the salting and pickling.

The step that matters

Drain the cucumbers well after salting. Salt draws out a lot of liquid from the cucumbers and onions. If they are not drained thoroughly, the extra water dilutes the vinegar and can leave the pickle soggy and weakly flavored.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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