It is often claimed that pickled cucumbers were first developed for workers building the Great Wall of China, though another hypothesis is that they were first made in the Tigris Valley of Mesopotamia, using cucumbers brought originally from India.

A pickled cucumber (commonly known as a pickle in the United States and Canada) is a cucumber that has been pickled in a brine, or vinegar and left to ferment for some time, by either immersing the cucumbers in an acidic solution or through souring by Lacto-fermentation.