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Sour Pickles

A simple cucumber pickle made by soaking cucumbers in a strong brine and then sealing them with boiling vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Sour Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Make a brine strong enough to float an egg.

  2. Soak cucumbers in the brine for 24 hours.

  3. Remove cucumbers from the brine and wipe them dry.

Pack and seal

  1. Place cucumbers in fruit jars.

  2. Boil vinegar in a porcelain kettle.

  3. Pour boiling vinegar over the cucumbers and seal jars tightly.

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 + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Cucumber + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body of the pickle, becoming crisp-tender and firm as they cure.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickles their sour flavour and helps preserve them.

The step that matters

Soaking the cucumbers in the brine for 24 hours. The brine must be strong enough to float an egg, and the soak time must be followed, so the salt draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them evenly. Too weak a brine or too short a soak can leave pickles soft or under-seasoned.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Cucumberthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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