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Cucumber Pickles

A simple cucumber pickle made by salting, brining, and refrigerating cucumbers in a vinegar and spice solution.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and slice cucumbers.

  2. Sprinkle salt over cucumbers and let sit for a few hours.

Pickle and store

  1. Combine vinegar, sugar, and spices in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the cucumbers in a jar.

  3. Seal the jar and let it cool before refrigerating.

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. Mustard + dilltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together560 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
Provide the crisp main body that absorbs the brine's flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the pickles.
Sugar
Balances the sourness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, helping them stay crisp and season evenly.

The step that matters

Sprinkling salt and resting the cucumbers. Salt draws moisture out of the cucumber slices through osmosis. Letting them rest for a few hours lets this happen, which firms the texture and lets the brine penetrate more evenly.

Swap the dill

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Dillthe original
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar, mustard. 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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