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Cucumber Pickles

A quick vinegar pickle of cucumbers with alum, red pepper, horseradish, mustard seed, and cold vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the cucumbers.

  2. Place them in a jar and pour enough boiling vinegar over them to cover.

  3. Dissolve a small piece of alum in the vinegar.

  4. Let the cucumbers stand in the vinegar for 24 hours.

Pack and seal

  1. Pack the cucumbers tightly into jars or bottles.

  2. Add a few pieces of red pepper according to taste.

  3. Cover with thinly sliced horseradish root and sprinkle with mustard seed if available.

  4. Fill the jars with cold vinegar and seal 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. Horseradish + mustardtop 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. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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
Provide the crisp body of the pickle that the brine works on.
Boiling vinegar
Acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during soaking.
Horseradish root
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and flavour to the pickle.

The step that matters

Dissolving the alum in the vinegar. Alum firms the cucumber tissue so it stays crisp. It must be fully dissolved in the vinegar so it spreads evenly; undissolved pieces can leave uneven spots on the pickles.

“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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