Name: To Pickle Gherkins
Ingredients: gherkin cucumbers; boiling water; cold water; boiling vinegar; tarragon; small silver onions; coarse sea salt; whole black pepper

Why it works: Cucumber and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 274 recipes mention both. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

To Pickle Gherkins

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the gherkins thoroughly.
Boil them in plenty of fast-boiling water for 1 minute.
Quickly transfer them to a large bowl of very cold water and change the water once.
Once the gherkins are cold, drain them well and spread them on sieves or dishes to air dry.
Place the dried gherkins in stone jars and cover them with boiling vinegar.
Heat the vinegar again and pour it over the gherkins the next day.
On the following day, add the gherkins to the boiling vinegar for 1 minute along with tarragon, small silver onions, coarse sea salt, and whole black pepper.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Cucumber + tarragontop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together274 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,399 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,547 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together6,050 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together4,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

Lettucebetter flavor fit
Mustardbetter flavor fit
Shallotbetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, tarragon, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).