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Sliced Cucumber Pickles

Pickled sliced cucumbers with onions, salt, alum, pepper, and cold vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sliced Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the cucumbers and slice them lengthwise into ¼ inch thick slices.

  2. Mix a few slices of onions with the cucumbers and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  3. Let the mixture stand for one day and night.

  4. Rinse the cucumbers in cold water and wipe them dry.

Pack and cover

  1. Place the cucumbers and onions in jars.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of powdered alum and 1 teaspoon of ground black pepper to each quart.

  3. Pour enough cold vinegar over the cucumbers to cover them well.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the main body of the pickle, becoming crisp-textured once salted and pickled.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, firming them and concentrating their flavor before pickling.
Cold vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Powdered alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during pickling.

The step that matters

Let the salted mixture stand for one day and night. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers through osmosis. Resting long enough lets the cucumbers lose moisture and firm up, so they stay crisp rather than soft once covered in vinegar. Rinsing and drying afterwards removes excess salt.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, 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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