Gherkin (French cornichon) is of the same species as the cucumber (Cucumis sativus). Picked when 3 to 8 cm (1 to 3 in) in length and pickled in jars or cans with vinegar (often flavoured with herbs, particularly dill; hence, ‘dill pickle’) or brine to become a pickled cucumber.The word is of Persian origin, angārah, passing through Greek and Polish, and entering the English language from early modern Dutch, in which the diminutive gurkkijn or agurkkijn denotes a small cucumber. (The word ‘pickle’ itself is derived from the Dutch pekel, a salt or acid preserving fluid.) The similarly pronounced Swedish word, "gurka", actually means cucumber, cognate with German "Gurke".The fruit itself may have originated in India, but the ‘pickled gherkin’ was known, although not by that name, to the ancient Mesopotamians no later than the 3rd century BC and enjoyed in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The gherkin is mentioned in English in the seventeenth century, although the English diarist Samuel Pepys describes the ‘girkin’ in his entry for 1661-12-01 as ‘a rare thing’. Knowledge of the condiment may have been disseminated throughout Europe from the Middle East in the course of the Jewish Diaspora.From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia