Skip to main content
Salad

Ripe Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber dish made with vinegar, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Ripe Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel cucumbers and remove seeds.

  2. Cut cucumbers in half lengthwise, then cut into narrow strips about 4 inches long.

  3. Soak cucumbers in weak brine overnight.

Cook and bottle

  1. Put spices in a cheesecloth bag.

  2. Cook cucumbers and spices in vinegar and sugar until soft.

  3. Bottle the mixture while 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.

  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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cucumber + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together501 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the pickle's main body, becoming tender as they cook in the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses the cooking liquid.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aromatic flavour to the pickling liquid.
Allspice
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour that blends with the other spices.

The step that matters

Cooking until soft. Cooking the cucumbers in hot vinegar and sugar softens their structure and lets the spices and acid penetrate. Stopping too early leaves them firm, while overcooking makes them mushy.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Horseradishfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon, allspice. 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 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes