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Cucumbers or Other Small Pickles

A vinegar-based pickle using cucumbers and spices like ginger, celery seed, cinnamon, and turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cucumbers or Other Small Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. Combine vinegar, ginger, celery seed, cinnamon, turmeric, horseradish, garlic, pepper, cloves, mace, and allspice in a large pot.

  2. Boil the sugar in the vinegar until dissolved, then pour over the spice mixture.

  3. Add garlic and horseradish once the mixture has cooled.

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Boil cucumbers in plain vinegar before adding them to the spiced vinegar.

  2. Gherkins and snaps can be prepared in the same way as 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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + turmerictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turmeric + horseradishtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness to the finished pickles.
Turmeric
Gives the pickling liquid its characteristic yellow colour and a mild earthy flavour.
Ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic bite that rounds out the spice blend.

The step that matters

Adding garlic and horseradish after cooling. Garlic and horseradish are pungent because of volatile compounds that fade with heat. Adding them once the mixture has cooled helps keep their sharp flavour in the finished pickles.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, ginger, celery, cinnamon, turmeric, horseradish, pepper):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, ginger, celery, cinnamon, turmeric, horseradish, pepper. 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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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