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Cucumber Pickles

A method for pickling cucumbers using salt, vinegar, mustard seed, alum, horseradish, spices, and red peppers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Wash the cucumbers and sprinkle a handful of coarse sea salt over them.

  2. Cover the cucumbers with hot water.

  3. Drain the water from the cucumbers.

  4. Cover the cucumbers with boiling water.

  5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for two more mornings (total three mornings).

Cure in vinegar

  1. Let the cucumbers stand in cold vinegar for three days.

Pack and seal

  1. In a pot, combine 1 gallon of vinegar and a little white mustard seed, and bring to a boil.

  2. Remove the cucumbers from the cold vinegar and place them in a jar with a small piece of alum, horseradish root, a bag of spices, and 2-3 red peppers.

  3. Pour the boiling vinegar over the cucumbers, cover the jar, and store it away.

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. 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
Main vegetable that softens and turns crisp-tender and pickled through salting and vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, firming them and preparing them to take up vinegar.
Vinegar
Acid that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickles their sour flavour.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent, earthy flavour to the brine.
Alum
Helps keep the cucumbers firm during pickling.
Horseradish root
Adds sharp, pungent aroma and heat to the pickles.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling vinegar over the cucumbers. The vinegar must be at a full boil when poured so the jar is hot and the brine can penetrate and preserve the cucumbers. Cooling vinegar may leave the pickles less safely preserved.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mustard, horseradish, pepper. 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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