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Preserve

Currie Pickled Cucumbers

A pickled cucumber recipe flavored with vinegar, salt, pepper, curry powder, mustard, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Currie Pickled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Boil the vinegar with salt and pepper.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix curry powder, cornstarch, and mustard with cold vinegar.

  3. Stir this mixture into the boiling vinegar.

Pickle

  1. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the cucumbers.

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 + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + cucumbertop 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the hot vinegar so the liquid clings to the cucumbers.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and emulsifying body to the pickling liquid.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the pickle.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves and sharpens the cucumbers.
Cucumbers
Main vegetable that absorbs the flavoured vinegar as it pickles.

The step that matters

Mix the cornstarch into cold vinegar before adding it to the boil. Cornstarch clumps into lumps if added directly to hot liquid. Blending it first into cold vinegar disperses the starch granules evenly, so when stirred into the boiling vinegar it thickens smoothly.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

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