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Glenburn Cucumber Pickles

A preserved cucumber pickle made with gherkins, salt, onions, mustard seed, celery seed, horseradish, vinegar, sugar, cayenne pepper, and alum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 297 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Glenburn Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Combine gherkins, salt, and enough water to cover. Let stand overnight.

  2. Drain and wipe gherkins dry.

Pack the jars

  1. Layer gherkins in jars with shredded onions, mustard seed, and celery seed.

  2. Add pieces of horseradish on top of the jars.

Brine and seal

  1. Boil vinegar, sugar, cayenne, and alum together.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles and seal the jars.

  3. Pickles will be ready to use in about four months.

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 + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Gherkins
Provide the main crisp vegetable body of the pickle.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the pickles and gives their sharp flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the gherkins, firming them before pickling.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that carries through the brine.

The step that matters

Drain and wipe the gherkins dry. Surface water left on the cucumbers dilutes the hot vinegar brine and weakens its preserving acidity, which can make the pickles soft and cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, celery, horse, radish, 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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