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Sliced Cucumber Pickles

A jar of sliced cucumbers pickled with salt, mustard seed, celery seed, onions, olive oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Sliced Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cucumbers but do not peel them.

  2. Layer the cucumbers in a gallon jar, adding ½ teacup of coarse sea salt between layers. Let the cucumbers stand for three hours.

Layer and cover

  1. Add black mustard seed, celery seed, and chopped onions between layers of cucumbers.

  2. Continue layering until the jar is filled, sprinkling seeds, onions, and about 2 tablespoons of olive oil between layers.

  3. Pour the remaining olive oil over the top and fill the jar with cold 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. 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 bulk that becomes the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, firming their texture and seasoning them.
Black mustard seed
Releases sharp, pungent flavor and aroma as it sits in the liquid.
Onions
Add sharp, savory flavor that mellows during standing.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, carrying the seasoning flavors through the jar.
Vinegar
Its acidity preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle a sour bite.

The step that matters

Standing the salted cucumbers for three hours. Salt draws water out of the cucumber through osmosis, which firms the flesh and seasons it. Skipping or shortening this stand leaves the cucumbers softer and less crisp, and the salt has less time to season them evenly.

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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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