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Pickled Cucumbers

A method of pickling cucumbers using a brine of salt, water, vinegar, alum, spices, and turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Pickled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Place cucumbers in a wooden or stone vessel.

  2. Pour boiling water mixed with coarse sea salt over the cucumbers.

  3. Add a weight to keep them submerged in the brine.

  4. After three days, pour off the brine, boil it, and pour it back over the cucumbers.

  5. Let them sit for another three days.

Soak and pickle

  1. Remove cucumbers and soak them overnight in cold water.

  2. The next day, heat the cucumbers in a pot without boiling them.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of alum and spices (1 tablespoon each of mace, cinnamon, black and white peppercorns, mustard seed, and grated horseradish) for every gallon of vinegar, along with 1 teaspoon of turmeric.

  4. Seal jars tightly with a double layer of linen and brown paper, then fill with the vinegar mixture.

  5. Store in a dry place.

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. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + turmerictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the pickle itself, becoming crisp and firm as they cure in brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the brine stage.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its tang.
Alum
Helps keep cucumbers firm and crisp during pickling.

The step that matters

Heating the cucumbers without boiling. Boiling softens cucumber flesh and makes it mushy, so the cucumbers should only be heated gently until warm.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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