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Eipe Cucumber Pickles

Cucumbers pickled with vinegar, sugar, spices, and brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Eipe Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare and cut the cucumbers into strips, removing the seeds.

  2. Soak the cucumbers in a weak brine for 12 hours.

  3. Pour off the brine and scald the cucumbers in alum water until clear.

  4. Wash the cucumbers in cold water and drain.

Pickle

  1. In a pot, combine the vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and mace. Boil the mixture.

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the cucumbers and repeat this process 2 or 3 times.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Cucumber + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together874 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 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

Cucumbers
Main vegetable that is softened by brining and takes on the spiced syrup.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and helps preserve the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers in the brine, firming them and reducing their moisture.

The step that matters

Repeating the boiling syrup pour. Pouring the boiling mixture over the cucumbers 2 or 3 times lets the hot, sugary vinegar slowly penetrate the cucumber strips, so the flavour and preservation reach the centre rather than just the surface.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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