WHAT IS A pickle, anyway? Is a pickle still a pickle if it wasn't ever a cucumber? A veritable lexicon of terms swirls around the process of creating the tasty and vaguely mysterious item known as a pickle: brine, cure, ferment, lactic acid, water bath, sour, dill, half sour, headspace, high/low acid, botulism, oxidation ... And: What's the difference between marinating, pickling, and curing? I got in a pickle just trying to figure out what is (and is not) a pickle.

Vinegar, which at first I thought would be a key to classification, turned out to be a red herring. Here follows a shorter what's what, and what isn't, in pickling – arduously extracted and distilled from various vinegar-and-salt-stained sources, including a brain or two.

It could be said that marinating, pickling, and curing are, all three, ways of imparting flavor to, and preserving, foods. Marinating is for only very short-term preservation, and that's not its foremost goal. As Joy of Cooking simply says, "Marinades are a way of spreading flavor by immersion.... But perhaps the most important function of a marinade is to tenderize tough foods." Thus, any marinade always contains an acid (which breaks down tough proteins), and often seasonings and oil. Seviche, for example, is raw fish (and other seafood) marinated in lemon or lime juice, with olive oil and spices; the citrus juice performs a kind of cooking action on the fish's protein.

Curing is an umbrella term for a number of methods of preserving food, among them smoking (hot and cold), corning, and, not least, the ticklish pickling. To become a pickle, a food must get intimate with a solution high in salt or acid (often both). Most pickles are preserved in brine (a mix of salt and water), vinegar, and various spices. Some pickles, though, are only salt- or brine-reliant. Thus, sauerkraut, beloved salted, spiced cabbage (dry-salted or made with brine), is a pickle.

When my mother was growing up in Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union's wild west of sorts – complete with no running water and a population of exiled Stalinist executioners – her family used to pickle vegetables in barrels in the cellar, a hollow dug out of the dirt below their building. Later, when the cellar was converted to a basement and hot-water pipes were instituted, conditions for pickling in barrels became inhospitable, and the family turned to glass jars. Without the barrels they missed the taste of oak and bought oak bark at the pharmacy to add to the pickling brine. One aspect in their pickling practice, though, was steadfast: no vinegar.

What's valuable in vinegar is that it has acetic acid and lowers the pH of a pickling solution; both factors are positives for preservation and prevent the growth of such nasty spoilers and bacteria as botulism. But vinegar's preservative strength is counterbalanced by its overpowering flavor. On a recent visit to Santa Monica, I got to try an American incarnation of my mother's family's "half-sour" pickles. "Half-sour" generally refers to pickles that are cured quickly in relatively low-salt brine without vinegar. The following are my favorites, creating a tasty, crunchy pickle that still recalls its cucumber past. (NB: Because the recipe that follows doesn't use canning or preserving methods to forestall dangerous bacteria, it's not the safest. Enjoy at your own risk.)

Irina's half-sour (malosol'nye) cucumber pickles (makes two quarts)

2-quart glass jar with lid, thoroughly cleaned and sterilized

Brine: 2 quarts water and 1/2 cup kosher salt (without additives)

2 lbs. pickling (a.k.a. Kirby) cucumbers. These should be firm, small (2 to 4 inches long), and as fresh as possible. Pickling cucumbers are the "warty" kind.

A few dill stems with florets, preferably the mature ones that have gone to seed. Fresh dill and dry seeds can be substituted.

3 to 4 medium whole, peeled garlic cloves. For a stronger garlic flavor, cut cloves (all or some) into thick slivers.

1 or 2 of the smallest Hungarian (or other sweet) peppers (optional)

6 aromatic black currant leaves. Fresh are preferable, but dried will do. (These are also optional, but they are desirable for best flavor, and their presence likely helps keep the pickles crisp.)

1 hot pepper, whole or slashed lengthwise for increased spice. For extra spiciness, slice the hot pepper in rounds. (Optional.)

Wash all the ingredients. Pack all the ingredients (except the brine) in the jar, tightly, in layers: layer of cucumbers, layer of dill and garlic, layer of currant leaves, etc.). If you're using the hot pepper whole or slashed, put it in the middle layer; otherwise, distribute the rounds throughout. Make sure the top layer in the jar is smooth, so that, once the brine is added, no ingredients are sticking out of the liquid.

Brining: Bring the water to a boil and dissolve the salt in it. Pour the boiling brine over the packed ingredients in the jar; cover the ingredients completely but leave at least a couple of inches of headspace at the top. Knock or shake the jar gently but firmly to drive the air bubbles to the surface. Let the jar stand with the lid on loosely – in a cool/room-temperature place. When the mix has begun fermenting, put the lid firmly on the jar and stick the jar in the fridge. Signs of fermentation to look for: effervescence rising to the surface, and/or the brine starts to cloud slightly; in hot weather this takes a day or two. Keep the jar in the fridge to prevent runaway fermentation. In two to three days you'll have lightly half-sour pickles. The pickles will slowly get "picklier". Eat within a week or two.

A tip for the impatient pickler: Cut one or two of the larger cucumbers into quarters and put them in the top layer when packing the ingredients into the jar. These will be ready to eat sooner.

E-mail Masha Gutkin at lydialeapfrog@yahoo.com.