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Pickle of Ripe Cucumbers

A preserved cucumber pickle made with horse-radish, mustard seed, garlic, onions, vinegar, ginger, allspice, and turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pickle of Ripe Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel, split, and seed the cucumbers, then sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Let stand for 24 hours.

  2. Sun-dry the cucumbers until moderately dry, then wash them with vinegar.

Pack and seal

  1. Layer the cucumbers in a jar, alternating with horse-radish, mustard seed, garlic, and onions.

  2. In a pot, boil 1 quart of vinegar with grated ginger, allspice, and turmeric. Allow to cool.

  3. Pour the cooled vinegar mixture over the cucumbers, tie the jar tightly, and store it away.

Mature

  1. Let the pickle mature for several months before using.

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 + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Radish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickle; salting and sun-drying remove water so they stay crisp.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, firming them and helping preserve the pickle.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp, tangy flavour.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, slightly bitter flavour that develops during the long maturing.
Ginger
Contributes warm, aromatic spice to the vinegar brine.

The step that matters

Sun-drying the cucumbers until moderately dry. Drying removes surface water before the vinegar wash and brine. Too little drying leaves excess moisture that dilutes the vinegar and can weaken preservation, while over-drying makes the cucumbers tough.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, horse, radish, mustard, garlic, onion):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, horse, radish, mustard, garlic, onion. 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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