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Olive Oil Pickles

Pickles made with cucumbers, olive oil, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Olive Oil Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Cover the sliced cucumbers with boiling water.

  2. Once cool, cover with a weak brine made of ½ cup salt to 1 gallon water.

  3. Let stand overnight.

  4. In the morning, drain the cucumbers.

Pickle and bottle

  1. Add cloves, allspice, celery seed, cinnamon, olive oil, sugar, and mustard seed.

  2. Cover with cold vinegar.

  3. Bottle the mixture.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Allspice + mustardtop 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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp vegetable body that the brine and vinegar flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the overnight brine.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a rounded, mellow richness to the pickling liquid.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickles.
Mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, toasty flavor to the pickling mixture.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, clove, allspice, cinnamon, olive, sugar, mustard):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, clove, allspice, cinnamon, olive, sugar, mustard. 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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