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To Pickle Gherkins

A method for pickling small cucumbers in a vinegar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,152 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

To Pickle Gherkins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gherkins

  1. Gather gherkins on a dry day before frost and remove blossoms.

  2. Place gherkins in a stone jar and cover with boiling brine.

  3. The next day, remove gherkins, wipe them, and layer in a clean stone jar with bay leaves.

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, salt, peppercorns, ginger, and mace. Bring to a boil.

  2. Pour the boiling pickle over the gherkins, covering them by 1-2 inches.

  3. Cover the jar with a plate and let it sit for two days.

Reheat and store

  1. Drain the vinegar and reheat it until boiling.

  2. Add gherkins to the boiling vinegar and simmer for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Pour everything back into the jar, cover with a plate, and let it cool completely.

  4. Once cool, tightly cover the jar with thick brown paper.

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. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Vinegar + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,126 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Gherkins
Provide the crisp, firm body that the pickle is built around.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the gherkins and seasons the pickle through.
Bay leaves
Add a gentle, herbal aroma to the pickled gherkins.

The step that matters

Simmering the gherkins for 2-3 minutes. Heat softens the pectin and cell walls in cucumbers, so simmering them too long makes them limp. Keeping this brief helps them stay crisp while still warming through in the hot vinegar.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, 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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