Skip to main content
Main

Vinegar-pickle

A pickling method using vinegar, spices, onion, lemon, and sugar to flavor pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Vinegar-pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spice bag

  1. In a bowl, mix the spices together: cinnamon, cloves, mace, celery salt, black pepper, and cayenne.

  2. Add enough vinegar to the spices to create a smooth paste.

  3. Place the spice mixture in the center of a square of muslin, gather the edges, and tie tightly.

  4. Cut off excess muslin and place the spice bag into boiling vinegar.

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. Add sugar, chopped onion, and sliced lemon to the vinegar.

  2. Boil the mixture, covered, for 15 minutes or until strongly flavored.

Pack and pour

  1. Prepare pickles by removing them from ice water and wiping them dry.

  2. Place pickles in jars and pour the hot spiced vinegar over them.

  3. Add the spice bag into the jars among the pickles.

  4. For added flavor, consider adding mustard, allspice, ginger, or curry powder.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Forms the acidic base that preserves the pickles and carries the spice flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma that defines the spiced flavor of the brine.
Ground cloves
Contributes strong, pungent aroma to the spiced vinegar.
Ground mace
Adds a warm, nutmeg-like aroma to the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Boiling the spiced vinegar. Boiling extracts flavor from the spices, onion and lemon into the vinegar. Boiling too briefly leaves the brine weak, so the spices need the full simmer time to release their aroma.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, cinnamon, clove, celery, pepper, sugar, onion):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, cinnamon, clove, celery, pepper, sugar, onion. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes