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Rough and Ready Pickle

A quick pickle of cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, onions, and spices, boiled in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Rough and Ready Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel the cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, and peppers.

  2. Slice the cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, and peppers.

  3. Salt the cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, and peppers separately.

  4. Let the salted vegetables stand overnight.

  5. Press the vegetables dry.

  6. Chop the vegetables very fine.

Make the pickle

  1. Add the spices, ground pepper, celery seed, and brown sugar to the mixture.

  2. Cover the mixture with good vinegar.

  3. Stir the mixture well.

  4. Boil the mixture for five minutes.

Jar

  1. Put the mixture in jars.

  2. Cover the 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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  5. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 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
Provide the bulk of the pickle and a crisp, fresh texture.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during cooking.
Brown sugar
Balances the vinegar's acidity and adds sweetness and depth.
Celery seed
Adds a savory, aromatic flavor to the pickle.
White onions
Add savory flavor and bulk, softening as the mixture cooks.

The step that matters

Salting and pressing the vegetables. Salting draws out water through osmosis, and pressing removes the liquid it releases. Skipping or rushing these steps leaves the pickle watery and dilutes the vinegar, so it keeps poorly and tastes weak.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, pepper, clove, allspice, mustard, celery):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, pepper, clove, allspice, mustard, celery. 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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