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Pickles

A pickled cucumber relish made with cucumbers, onions, ginger, mustard, cloves, salt, vinegar, brown sugar, black pepper, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 2 hours.

  3. Allow to cool before storing.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  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

Cucumbers
Make up the bulk of the pickles and absorb flavor from the spiced brine.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickles.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body to the brine as they cook down.

The step that matters

Boiling time. Boiling for the full 2 hours softens the cucumbers and concentrates the brine. Boiling much longer can make the cucumbers mushy and the brine overly reduced, so watch the pot closely.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, ginger, mustard, clove, vinegar, sugar, pepper. 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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