Ingredient · Ingredients
Cucumber
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A low-acid vegetable whose firm, correctly sized fruit is the usual body of a pickled product made with vinegar, sugar, and spice.
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Cucumber is a fruit used as a vegetable. Raw, it is mostly water and a clean green taste. Preserved, it is the usual pickle.
NCHFP: pickled products blend spices, sugar, and vinegar with fruits and vegetables 1. The hub’s own examples include quick pickled sweet cucumber slices. Firmness is quality; a collapsed cucumber was already a salad. Vinegar is the acid in fresh-pack work; Salt is flavor and, in fermented pickles, part of the ecology. Mustard seed is a common spice.
Canning. Fresh vegetables except most tomatoes are low-acid (pH above 4.6) 2. A cucumber becomes an acid food when it is a pickle on a tested process — not because you like dill. See Canning and Preserving.
What to notice. Pickling cucumbers are firm and warty; slicing cucumbers are thinner-skinned and seedy. Blossom-end softness is a quality defect. Taste raw cucumber as water and green; taste pickle as acid, salt, and spice on that same flesh.
Fermented-dill pickles are a separate preparation. See Pickling and Fermented pickles.
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- Also called
- cucumbers
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Cited in this article
- Pickling — National Center for Home Food Preservation, University of Georgia — Hub page for pickled products as vinegar, sugar, and spice with vegetables or fruit.
- Ensuring Safe Canned Foods — National Center for Home Food Preservation, University of Georgia — Adapted from USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, AIB No. 539 (revised 2015). Acid vs low-acid foods, pH 4.6, botulinum, boiling-water vs pressure canning.
Updated 2026-08-26. gg:ingredient:cucumber · CC BY 4.0
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Gourmet Gastronomer. "Cucumber." Gourmet Gastronomer. Updated August 26, 2026. https://gourmetgastronomer.com/ingredients/cucumber/.
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