Skip to main content
Main

Cucumber Pickles

A brined cucumber pickle made with brown sugar, mustard seed, cinnamon, celery seed, alum, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the cucumbers in brine for 24 hours.

  2. In a pot, combine brown sugar, mustard seed, cinnamon, celery seed, and alum.

  3. Add enough cider vinegar to cover the pickles.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Pour the boiling mixture over the drained cucumbers.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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; soaking in brine firms and seasons them before pickling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sour bite.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavor to the brine.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling mixture over the drained cucumbers. The cucumbers must be well drained before the boiling liquid is poured over them, so excess brine does not dilute the vinegar and weaken the pickling solution.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, sugar, mustard, cinnamon, egg, cider, vinegar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, sugar, mustard, cinnamon, egg, 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 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes