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Old Fashioned Quick Cucumber Pickles

A quick cucumber pickle made with salt, vinegar, sugar, and cayenne pepper.

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

Old Fashioned Quick Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers.

  2. Cut them into quarters lengthwise.

  3. Soak the cucumbers in a weak saltwater solution overnight.

  4. In the morning, drain the cucumbers.

Pickle

  1. Pour enough vinegar over the cucumbers to cover them.

  2. Heat the vinegar and add the sugar and cayenne pepper.

  3. Once the mixture is cold, the pickles are ready to serve.

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

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  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

Cucumbers
Form the crisp body of the pickle that absorbs the brine flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers during the overnight soak, firming the texture.
Vinegar
Provides the sour, acidic base that preserves and flavours the pickles.
Sugar
Balances the sourness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Soaking in salt water overnight. Salt draws water out of the cucumber through osmosis, firming the flesh so it stays crisp rather than soft once pickled. Too weak a brine or too short a soak leaves the pickles limp.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, pepper. 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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