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Cucumbers in Girktns, Wet

Pickled cucumbers prepared with salt, water, and syrup, boiled and left to stand.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and syrup work together. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 90 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cucumbers in Girktns, Wet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Wash cucumbers thoroughly and remove any spots.

  2. Soak cucumbers in a mixture of salt and water for 2-3 days.

  3. Drain cucumbers and scald them in fresh water.

  4. Place cucumbers in a tub and let them stand overnight.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Drain the water and place cucumbers in a pan with 2 quarts of water and ½ pint of syrup.

  2. Boil cucumbers over low heat for 5 minutes.

  3. Return cucumbers to the tub and let them stand until the next day.

  4. Boil cucumbers again, then drain the syrup.

  5. In a clean pan, boil the syrup until it reaches a proper thickness.

  6. Add cucumbers to the syrup and boil gently for 15 minutes.

Store and finish

  1. Transfer cucumbers to a flat brown pan and cover them.

  2. Let them stand for 2 days, then drain the syrup.

  3. Boil the syrup for 1 minute and pour it over the cucumbers.

  4. The next day, boil the cucumbers and syrup together for 3-4 minutes and repeat for 5 days.

  5. Finally, place cucumbers in pots or a cream pan and cover.

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. Cucumber + syruptop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together90 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Main vegetable that softens and absorbs the brine and syrup during repeated soaking and boiling.
Salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and helps preserve them during the initial brine soak.
Syrup
Provides sweetness and, once thickened, coats the cucumbers and helps preserve them.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to proper thickness. If the syrup is too thin it will not coat the cucumbers or hold them well, and if over-reduced it can turn overly sweet and sticky. Repeated boiling and resting over several days is what gradually sweetens the cucumbers and helps them keep.

“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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