Skip to main content
Main

Spiced Cucumbers

A pickled cucumber dish seasoned with salt, onions, celery seed, cayenne, black pepper, red pepper pods, olive oil, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Spiced Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and drain

  1. Layer the sliced cucumbers in a stone jar, sprinkling each layer with fine salt.

  2. Let them stand in a cool place for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the cucumbers well through a sieve.

  4. Add the thinly sliced onions to the cucumbers.

Pack and pickle

  1. In glass preserve jars, layer the cucumbers and onions alternately, sprinkling each layer with celery seed, cayenne, and black pepper.

  2. Add 2-3 small red pepper pods to each jar.

  3. Pour over the olive oil and cider vinegar.

  4. Screw the cover on tightly to exclude all air.

  5. Let them sit for 3 days before using.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,745 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickle, releasing moisture under salt and keeping a crisp, firm bite.
Fine salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, firming them and helping the pickle keep.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, coating the vegetables and sealing them from air.

The step that matters

Drain the cucumbers well after salting. Salt draws out water over 24 hours. Any water left behind dilutes the vinegar and oil and can make the pickle soggy and less well preserved.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, celery, pepper, olive, 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes