Name: Cucumber Pickles
Ingredients: 6 pounds coarse sea salt; 3 gallons vinegar; 2 quarts sugar; ½ pint mustard seed; allspice (to taste); ginger root (to taste); a little alum; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; 2 tablespoons celery seed

Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make a hot brine with the salt and pour it over the pickles. Let them stand for three days, then wipe them dry.
Make a solution of hot vinegar, water, and a little alum. Pour it over the pickles while boiling and let it stand for twenty-four hours, then wipe dry.
Combine the vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, allspice, ginger root, alum, cinnamon, and celery seed in a pot. Pour this mixture over the pickles while boiling hot.

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.

Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,620 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,928 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Swap the celery

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

Clovefits better
Nutmegfits better
Cardamomfits better
Celerythe original

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