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Cucumber Pickles

A simple vinegar-based cucumber pickle prepared by soaking cucumbers overnight and brining them with vinegar, salt, mustard, saccharine, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Wash cucumbers in the evening.

  2. Cover cucumbers with boiling water.

  3. Let cucumbers stand overnight.

  4. In the morning, pour off the water.

Pack and brine

  1. Pack cucumbers in jars or crocks.

  2. Cover with grape leaves if using crocks.

  3. Combine vinegar, salt, mustard, saccharine, and horseradish in a bowl. Stir the mixture until dissolved.

  4. Pour the mixture over the cucumbers while cold.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Horseradish + cucumbertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the pickles themselves, becoming crisp and firm as they cure in the brine.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the cucumbers and seasons the brine.
Horseradish
Adds pungent heat and aroma that infuse into the brine and cucumbers.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture over the cucumbers while cold. Pouring hot brine over cucumbers would soften them and cook their texture, so the brine must be cold before it goes on, keeping the pickles crisp.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mustard, horseradish. 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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