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Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using a brine and vinegar with sugar, mustard seed, cloves, cinnamon, alum, and celery seed.

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

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Select medium small-sized cucumbers.

  2. Prepare a brine that will float an egg.

  3. Heat the brine until boiling and pour it over the cucumbers.

  4. Let the cucumbers stand for 24 hours.

  5. Wipe the cucumbers dry.

Add the vinegar and spices

  1. Heat vinegar until boiling.

  2. Pour the boiling vinegar over the cucumbers.

  3. Let the cucumbers stand for another 24 hours.

  4. Change the vinegar to fresh vinegar.

  5. Add 1 quart brown sugar, 1 pint white mustard seed, a small handful whole cloves, a small handful cinnamon sticks, a piece of alum the size of an egg, and ½ cup celery seed.

  6. Heat the mixture until boiling.

  7. Pour the boiling mixture over the cucumbers.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the pickle itself, becoming firm and crisp as they cure in brine and vinegar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
White mustard seed
Adds a pungent, earthy flavor to the pickling liquid.
Celery seed
Adds a savory, aromatic note to the pickling liquid.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during pickling.

The step that matters

Wipe the cucumbers dry. Surface water left on the cucumbers dilutes the fresh vinegar and sugar mixture, weakening the preserving liquid and making it less effective at keeping the pickles firm.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, egg, vinegar, sugar, mustard, clove, cinnamon. 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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Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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