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Dill Pickles

Cucumbers pickled in a dill‑flavored brine of salt, water, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and dill match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 530 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dill Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place cucumbers in a saltwater solution overnight using 1 ½ cups salt in 4 quarts water.

  2. Boil 10 quarts of water, 1 quart of vinegar, and 2 cups of salt. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Pack and seal

  1. In the morning, drain the cucumbers and layer them in jars with dill.

  2. Cover the cucumbers with the brine and seal the jars.

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 + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 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. Vinegar + dilltop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together659 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The main vegetable that becomes the pickle, firm and crisp after brining.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons the brine, helping keep them firm.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickles their sour flavor and helps preserve them.
Dill
Adds aromatic herbal flavor that infuses the cucumbers in the jars.

The step that matters

Soaking the cucumbers overnight in the salt solution. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and firms their texture. Too short a soak leaves them soft and under-seasoned, while the brine's concentration determines how well the pickles keep.

Swap the dill

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Dillthe original
  3. Peppermintfits less well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar. 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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