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Cucumber Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made by boiling cucumbers in alum water, then preserving them in a sugar and cider vinegar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cucumber Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cucumbers into 1-inch thick pieces.

  2. Boil the cucumbers in weak alum water for 1 hour, then transfer to cold water until completely cool.

  3. Boil the cucumbers again in fresh alum water for 30 minutes, then drain well.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Make a syrup by combining 1 pound of sugar for each pound of cucumbers and 1 pound of cider vinegar; boil the syrup.

  2. Add the cucumbers to the syrup and boil until they become transparent.

  3. If the syrup is not thick enough, continue boiling after removing the cucumbers.

Finish

  1. Once cooled, sprinkle in some white mustard seed.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, absorbing the sweet syrup as they turn translucent.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, in a thick syrup, helps preserve the cucumbers.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp, tangy balance against the sugar.
Alum
Firms the cucumber flesh so it holds its shape rather than turning soft.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
White mustard seed
Adds a mild pungent aroma and a slight bite to the finished pickles.

The step that matters

Boil the cucumbers in the syrup until transparent. The cucumbers must absorb concentrated sugar syrup to turn translucent. Boiling too hard or too long can soften the flesh, while a syrup that is not thick enough will leave the pickles watery and less preserved.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, sugar, cider, vinegar, mustard, mace, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, sugar, cider, vinegar, mustard, mace, cinnamon. 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.

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