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West India Preserved Green Ginger

A preserved cucumber and ginger mixture flavored with spices and sugar.

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 ↓

West India Preserved Green Ginger

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Cut cucumbers lengthwise.

  2. Remove seeds and pulpy parts from cucumbers.

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

  4. Wash cucumbers in cold water.

  5. Boil cucumbers in fresh water until boiling. Remove cucumbers from heat and pour off water.

  6. Add cold water with bicarbonate of potash.

  7. Boil cucumbers for 30 minutes.

  8. Let sit in the water overnight.

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

Make the ginger infusion

  1. Boil ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and soft water for 5 minutes.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes in a covered pan.

  3. Strain the mixture through a flannel bag.

Make the syrup

  1. Add sugar to make a syrup.

  2. Clarify syrup with egg white.

  3. Boil syrup. 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; salting and soaking firm the flesh so it holds its texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the saltwater soak.
Bicarbonate of potash
Raises the water's alkalinity, helping the cucumbers stay crisp during boiling.
Ginger
Supplies the main aromatic flavour carried into the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Makes the syrup that sweetens and preserves the cucumbers.
Egg white
Binds impurities in the syrup so they can be skimmed off, clarifying it.

The step that matters

Skim until no scum rises. Egg white clarifies the syrup by coagulating impurities into scum; skimming thoroughly removes them so the syrup stays clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, clove, cinnamon, sugar, egg. 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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