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Cucumber Pickles

A simple cucumber pickle made with salt, water, spices, and cider vinegar, packed in jars and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Wash the cucumbers.

  2. Pack the cucumbers in a stone jar.

  3. Sprinkle the salt over the cucumbers.

  4. Scald the cucumbers with boiling water to cover.

  5. Let the cucumbers stand overnight.

  6. Drain or dry the cucumbers.

Pack and seal

  1. Pack the cucumbers in glass jars.

  2. Spice the cucumbers with red pepper pods, whole black pepper grains, sliced horse-radish, and small onions.

  3. Boil the cider vinegar.

  4. Cover the cucumbers with the boiled cider vinegar.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + vinegartop 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
The main vegetable that is salted, softened and pickled into the finished product.
Fine salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and helps firm their texture during the overnight stand.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickles their sharp flavor.

The step that matters

Let the cucumbers stand overnight. The salt needs time to draw water out of the cucumbers. Skipping or shortening this rest leaves them softer and wetter, and the brine stays weaker.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cauliflowerfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, horse, radish, cider, 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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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