Skip to main content
Preserve

To Preserve Cucumbers

A method for preserving cucumbers in a sugar syrup with alum, grape leaves, lemon peel, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 380 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Preserve Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Soak cucumbers in water for three days, changing the water three times a day.

  2. Cut a slit in each cucumber and scrape out the seeds.

  3. Wash the cucumbers and treat them with alum and grape leaves.

  4. Fill the cucumbers with lemon peel, mace, and any other desired flavorings.

Make the syrup and preserve

  1. In a pot, combine 1¼ pounds of sugar with enough water to make a syrup.

  2. Boil the mixture until it becomes clear.

  3. Pour the syrup over the cucumbers and let them sit until preserved.

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 + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Walnut + grapetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cucumber + grapetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

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

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, which softens and takes on flavor during soaking and syrup contact.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during preserving.
Loaf sugar
Forms a syrup that preserves the cucumbers and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup until clear. Sugar must dissolve fully and the syrup must reach a steady boil so it is concentrated enough to preserve the cucumbers. Undissolved or under-boiled syrup can leave the pickles less stable.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, walnut, grape, lemon, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, walnut, grape, lemon, sugar. 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 pickled cucumbers recipes

Sweet 28and Onions 10Oil 8Green 4 See all 231 →

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes