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Sliced Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber and onion relish with cayenne, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Sliced Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the green rind off the cucumbers and slice them thick.

  2. In a large bowl, layer the cucumber slices and small onion pieces, sprinkling a little salt between each layer.

  3. Let the mixture stand for six hours to drain.

Pack and seal

  1. After draining, pack the cucumbers and onions into jars, adding cayenne pepper between each layer.

  2. Cover the contents with strong cider vinegar.

  3. Top each jar with 2 tablespoons of good sweet oil and seal tightly.

Finish

  1. After two weeks, pour off the vinegar and replace it with fresh vinegar.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, bulky vegetable body that the salt and vinegar soften and flavour.
Small onions
Add pungent aroma and flavour that mellows during the long steeping in vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and onions during draining, firming the texture.
Strong cider vinegar
Acidifies and preserves the vegetables, giving the pickles their sharp tang.

The step that matters

Draining with salt. Salting and standing for six hours draws out excess water. If the vegetables are not drained well, the extra moisture dilutes the vinegar and the pickles can turn soft and spoil sooner.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, cider, 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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