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Cucumber Pickle

Pickled cucumbers prepared with a brine and spice mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the cucumbers

  1. Make a brine that will float an egg; add cucumbers and let them soak for ten days.

  2. Remove cucumbers from brine and drain them.

  3. Soak cucumbers in clear water overnight.

  4. After draining, place cucumbers in a kettle with grape and cabbage leaves and a lump of alum.

  5. Cover cucumbers with vinegar diluted with water and simmer until they turn a pretty green color.

  6. Remove cucumbers to cool and drain them.

Spice and pack

  1. Place cucumbers in a three-gallon jar.

  2. In one quart of vinegar, combine mace, cloves, cinnamon, mustard seed, celery seed, black pepper, allspice, ground mustard, chopped horseradish, pepper pods, onions, race ginger, and sugar.

  3. Boil the spice mixture and pour it over the pickles.

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

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

  3. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Main vegetable that becomes the pickle; the brine and vinegar soak firm and flavor it.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during cooking.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that deepens as the pickles sit.

The step that matters

Simmering in vinegar until green. Simmering must be gentle and stopped once the color turns green; overcooking softens the cucumbers and dulls the color, while the alum and leaves help keep them firm.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, grape, cabbage, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, mustard):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, grape, cabbage, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, mustard. 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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