Pickling Spice: What’s in the Blend, What Each Spice Does, and How to Use It

There’s no official recipe for pickling spice. The USDA’s purchasing specification for spice blends names fifteen blends, and pickling spice isn’t one of them.¹ What the commercial mixes share is a core of whole mustard seed, allspice, coriander, cloves, bay leaf and pepper, while cinnamon, ginger, dill seed, chile and others come and go depending on the maker. The blend flavors pickle brine and also goes into corned beef and other brined foods. Keep it whole: home-canning guidance lists ground spices as a cause of dark, discolored pickles.²

At a glance

What’s in it: three published blends

Every maker sets its own mix. The ingredients below are in the order each label lists them.

McCormick’s label puts cinnamon first and ends with “Mace & Sulfiting Agent.”⁴ The Spice House uses cassia bark, cloves, allspice and star anise for warm sweetness, and pepper, mustard seed, dill seed and juniper for a savory tang. World Spice calls its version a stepped-up take on a British classic.

Flavor, and the compounds behind it

Overall, it tastes warm and sweet from the cinnamon, cloves and allspice, sharp from the mustard and pepper, and resinous from the bay and coriander. Each spice has its own aroma chemistry.

Mustard is the odd one out. Whole mustard seeds have no smell. Their heat comes from a reaction: crushed seed holds an enzyme, myrosinase, and a glucosinolate, sinigrin, and together they form allyl isothiocyanate.¹⁴ More on that at mustard powder and black mustard seeds.

Origin and history

The English word “pickle” comes from Middle English pykyl or pekill, meaning a sauce or gravy, from or related to Middle Dutch peeckel, brine. Merriam-Webster dates its first known use to the 15th century. You’ll sometimes see a German origin given, but that source doesn’t mention one.

A lot of the usual pickle history couldn’t be traced to a source we could open, including pickling in Mesopotamia around 2030 BC, Cleopatra’s and Julius Caesar’s fondness for pickles, and the use of pickling spices on salt pork and salt beef at sea. We’ve left those stories out.

One story often gets told wrong. Nicolas Appert’s work had nothing to do with pickles. Inspired by a French government prize for a way to preserve food for transport, he worked out preservation in hermetically sealed glass containers heated in boiling water. In 1810 he received a 12,000-franc award on condition that he publish his findings. The foods Britannica lists are soups, fruits, vegetables, juices and dairy products. No pickles.¹⁶

How pickling spice is used

Pickles. The National Center for Home Food Preservation publishes a USDA-derived recipe for quick fresh-pack dill pickles that uses 2 tablespoons of whole mixed pickling spice tied in a clean white cloth, with mustard seed and dill added to the jars separately.¹⁷ The Spice House suggests 2 teaspoons of its blend per quart jar of pickles.⁵ Those are their figures, not a rule.

Corned beef. The Spice House calls its blend ideal for corned beef and suggests five parts pickling spice to one part coriander seed.⁵ See corned beef and cabbage spices.

Other pickled foods. The Spice House suggests onions, beets, eggs, tomatoes and beans. Whole allspice berries go into pickling liquids as well as meat broths and gravies, and pickles are among the savory uses of mace.

Vinegar. World Spice suggests steeping its blend in cider vinegar to make a condiment for salads, sandwiches and slaws.

McCormick also suggests its blend for brines, marinades and stews.

What canning guidance says about spices

The National Center for Home Food Preservation’s troubleshooting table has four entries on spices:²

• Dark or discolored pickles can come from using ground spices. Use whole spices.
• Dark pickles can also come from leaving spices in the jars. Put the spices loosely in a cheesecloth bag so you can take them out before canning.
• A strong, bitter taste can come from cooking the spices too long in the vinegar or using too many. Stick to the recipe’s amounts and boiling time.
• Soft or slippery pickles can come from moldy spices. Always use fresh spices.

For the salt side of the jar, see pickling salt.

Buying and quality

Read the label. The three blends above differ by as many as five ingredients, and one contains a sulfiting agent. If you want dill flavor from the blend itself, look for dill seed, because McCormick’s list doesn’t include it. The Spice House labels its blend “Contains mustard.”

We found no grade standard for pickling spice.

Storage

We couldn’t find a published shelf life for pickling spice as a blend. NCHFP just says to use fresh spices. One component does have a measured answer: PROSEA notes that whole dried coriander fruits keep their essential oil for several years without loss, while crushed ones lose it quickly.⁹ That’s about coriander, though, not the whole blend.

Health and safety

Allergy. Every blend above contains mustard. Mustard is one of the 14 allergens UK food businesses have to declare.³ It isn’t one of the nine major food allergens under US law, so US allergen labeling rules don’t require it to be flagged.¹⁸

Nutrients. Most nutrient claims for pickling spice come from per-100-gram figures for its components. USDA lists 41.9 g of dietary fiber and 21 mg of vitamin C per 100 g of coriander seed, for example.¹⁹ A pickle recipe uses tablespoons of the blend, often strained out, so those numbers tell you very little about what a jar of pickles gives you.

Health claims. We found no NIH or regulator review of pickling spice as a blend. NCCIH’s herb index is the place to look up individual herbs.²⁰ For juniper, which shows up in one of the blends above, the European Medicines Agency’s monograph covers traditional use for symptomatic relief of digestive complaints such as dyspepsia and flatulence,²¹ and its assessment notes there are no published clinical studies.²² Claims that pickling spice components fight cancer by neutralizing free radicals, or that rutin from bay leaves treats heart problems, aren’t supported by any review or regulator we found.

Substitutes and comparisons

• Pickling spice substitutes
• Corned beef and cabbage spices
• Component spices: allspice, cloves, coriander, bay leaves, dill, mustard seed uses, cinnamon, black pepper, mace, juniper berries
• Pickling salt