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Dill Pickles

A preserved cucumber dish flavored with dill and spices, stored in a barrel and sun-cured.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and dill match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 530 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dill Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the water, vinegar, and salt together, then set aside to cool.

  2. Soak cucumbers in cold soft water for 3 hours, then wipe them dry.

Pack and ferment

  1. Layer cucumbers in a barrel with mixed spices, dill, grape leaves, cherry leaves, horseradish, bay leaves, and wine stein.

  2. Continue layering until the barrel is full, then pour in the cooled liquid.

  3. Seal the barrel airtight and place it in the sun for 4 weeks, shaking it daily.

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 + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

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

  2. Dill + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  4. Grape + cherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together696 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + cherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body of the pickle, becoming crisp-tender and firm as they cure.
Vinegar
Adds sourness and acidity that preserves the pickles and gives their tang.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the brine, helping to preserve and firm the cucumbers.

The step that matters

Seal the barrel airtight. Pickles cure through controlled fermentation and the brine must cover the cucumbers. An airtight seal keeps air out, limiting spoilage by unwanted molds and bacteria while the cure develops.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, cucumber, dill, cherry, horseradish):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, cucumber, dill, cherry, horseradish. 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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