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French Cucumber Pickles

Pickled cucumbers with mustard and celery seeds in olive oil and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

French Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Slice the cucumbers thin, but do not peel them, to fill a gallon jar.

  2. Sprinkle a good amount of coarse sea salt over the cucumbers and let them stand for 3 hours.

  3. Drain the cucumbers and rinse them well.

Layer and seal

  1. In a glass jar, layer the cucumbers with the black mustard seed, white mustard seed, celery seed, and a portion of the olive oil between each layer.

  2. Continue layering until the jar is full, then cover with vinegar and seal.

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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, watery body of the pickle once salted and drained.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumber slices, firming them before layering.
Vinegar
Acidifies the jar, preserving the cucumbers and giving the pickle its sharp flavour.
Black mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that deepens as the seeds sit in the jar.
White mustard seed
Contributes milder mustard heat and aroma to the layered pickle.
Olive oil
Coats each layer, adding fat and richness to the pickle.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the cucumbers. Salt draws moisture out of the sliced cucumbers. Rinsing well removes surface salt so the pickle is not overly salty, and draining removes excess water so the slices stay crisp rather than diluting the vinegar.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, mustard, celery, olive, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, celery, olive, 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.

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