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Cucumbers in Girkins, Wet

Pickled cucumbers boiled in syrup and water, repeatedly simmered and drained.

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 Girkins, Wet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Select clear cucumbers, free from spots.

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

  3. Drain cucumbers and scald them in fresh water.

  4. Place them in a tub and let them sit overnight.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Drain the water, then mix 2 quarts of water with ½ pint of syrup.

  2. Boil cucumbers in the syrup mixture for 5 minutes over low heat.

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

  4. Drain the syrup and prepare a clean pan with syrup of proper thickness.

  5. Boil the syrup, then add cucumbers and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

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

  7. Let them sit for 2 days, then drain the syrup again.

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

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

Pack and finish

  1. Finally, place them 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
Form the main body of the pickle and absorb the salt and syrup over repeated soaking.
Salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and firms their texture during the brine soak.
Syrup
Provides sweetness and, when reboiled and thickened, preserves the cucumbers and gives them body.

The step that matters

Repeated boiling and draining of the syrup. Each reboiling concentrates and renews the syrup while the cucumbers sit between rounds. Skipping or shortening the rests can leave the pickle soft, under-sweetened, or prone to spoiling.

“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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