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Cucumber Pickles

A simple pickled cucumber recipe using salt, sugar, peppercorns, alum, and white wine vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the small cucumbers and pack them tightly into a Mason jar.

  2. In a quart jar, add 2 teaspoons of coarse sea salt, 2 teaspoons of sugar, 12 black peppercorns, and a pea-sized piece of alum.

  3. Fill the jar with white wine vinegar.

  4. Seal the jar for winter use.

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. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Cucumber + white winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together273 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers
Form the main body of the pickles, taking on flavor and crunch as they sit in the brine.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickles their tang.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons the brine, helping keep them firm.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Fill the jar with white wine vinegar. The vinegar must fully cover the cucumbers, since any cucumber left exposed to air can spoil or soften. Acidity from the vinegar is what keeps the pickles safe and crisp over time.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, white wine, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, 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 →

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