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West India Preserved Green Ginger

Preserved cucumbers soaked in saltwater, boiled, and sweetened with sugar and spices.

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 ↓

West India Preserved Green Ginger

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Cut cucumbers lengthwise and remove seeds and pulpy parts.

  2. Soak cucumbers in strong saltwater for 3 days, weighted down to submerge.

  3. Wash cucumbers in cold water.

  4. Boil cucumbers in a pan with cold water until boiling.

  5. Drain cucumbers.

Soften and rest

  1. Add cold water with ¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of potash for each quart of water.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Let sit in the water overnight.

  4. Drain cucumbers on a sieve covered with a cloth.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the reserved water for 5 minutes.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes in a covered pan.

  3. Strain the liquid through a flannel bag.

  4. Add 1¼ pounds of sifted loaf sugar to each pint.

  5. Make a syrup.

  6. Clarify the syrup with egg white.

  7. Boil and skim until no scum rises.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cucumber + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,319 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 preserved body; their cell structure softens and takes up the syrup as they are cooked.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens and preserves the cucumbers by drawing out water and building a thick syrup.
Bicarbonate of potash
Alkaline salt that helps the cucumber pieces firm up and stay crisp during soaking.
Egg white
Binds impurities in the syrup so they can be skimmed off, leaving it clear.

The step that matters

Clarify the syrup with egg white and skim. Heating the egg white in the syrup makes it coagulate and trap scum and particles. Skimming until no scum rises keeps the syrup clear and stops cloudiness or off flavours from developing.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, ginger, 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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