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Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using brine, vinegar, sugar, spices, and fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a brine that will float an egg and soak the cucumbers in it for 48 hours.

  2. Heat enough vinegar to cover the cucumbers until nearly boiling, then let it sit for 24 hours.

Make the pickles

  1. Add new vinegar, brown sugar, mustard seed, cloves, cinnamon, green peppers, celery seed, and ginger root.

  2. Once mixed, add green grapes and horseradish.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers
Form the main body of the pickles, absorbing the brine and vinegar flavors.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sour bite.
Green peppers
Add fresh, vegetal flavor and crunch to the pickle mixture.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and flavor to the spiced vinegar.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, mustard, clove, cinnamon, pepper, celery):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, mustard, clove, cinnamon, pepper, celery. 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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