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Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made by soaking cucumbers in brine, scalding with vinegar, and seasoning with mace, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and alum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Brine and scald

  1. Soak cucumbers in strong brine for one week.

  2. Scald cucumbers with boiling vinegar three times.

  3. Prepare a mixture of half vinegar and half water.

Alum scald and cut

  1. Scald the cucumbers three mornings in a row with this mixture and alum.

  2. Cut the cucumbers into quarters.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cucumber + cherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Cinnamon + cherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together551 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The vegetable being pickled; brining and scalding change its texture and saltiness.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that defines the pickle and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness with sweetness and helps preserve the pickles.
Alum
Helps the cucumber tissue stay firm during repeated heating.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma to the pickling liquid.
Cloves
Adds a strong, warm aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Scald the cucumbers three mornings in a row with the vinegar-water mixture and alum. Alum helps the cucumber tissue stay firm, while heat softens it. Repeating the treatment on successive days gradually firms the pickle. Heating too hard or too long can make cucumbers mushy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove, ginger, cherry. 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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