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Kalamazoo Pickles

Pickled cucumbers prepared with vinegar, salt, sugar, and spices.

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

  1. Trim the flower end from the cucumbers.

  2. Cover them with a brine made of water and salt.

  3. Let them sit for 24 hours.

  4. Drain the cucumbers.

Pack and seal

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

  2. Pack the cucumbers tightly into jars, leaving no gaps.

  3. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the cucumbers.

  4. 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
Form the body of the pickle, so their firm texture is the main thing the brine must preserve.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the pickles their tang and helps preserve them.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Alum
Helps firm the cucumber flesh so the pickles stay crisp.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, toasty aroma and flavor to the brine.
Broken cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and sweet spice flavor to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling vinegar and seal immediately. The vinegar mixture must be boiling when poured so the cucumbers and jar start hot. Sealing straight away keeps the contents hot, which helps the lids seal and limits the chance of spoilage.

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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