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Kalamazoo Pickles

A pickle recipe using cucumbers, vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, cinnamon, celery seed, alum, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Kalamazoo Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Nip the remains of the flower from the end of the cucumbers.

  2. Cover cucumbers with a brine made of 2 gallons of water and 1 pound of coarse sea salt. Let them stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the cucumbers.

Pickle and seal

  1. Boil the vinegar, alum, and spices together.

  2. Pack the cucumbers into jars, filling them tightly. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the cucumbers. Seal the jars immediately.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers
Provide the main body of the pickle, which firms and absorbs the brine and vinegar flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and helps them stay firm and crisp in the brine.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sour flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Draining after the brine. The cucumbers have soaked in strong salt brine for 24 hours. Draining them well before packing keeps excess salt from carrying into the jars, and the pickle's texture and balance depend on that step.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, sugar, mustard, cinnamon, vinegar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, sugar, mustard, cinnamon, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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