Skip to main content
Dessert

Cucumber Sweet Pickle

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

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

  2. Boil the cucumbers in weak alum water for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the cucumbers and place them in cold water until completely cool.

  4. Boil the cucumbers again in fresh alum water for 30 minutes.

  5. Drain the cucumbers well.

Make the syrup and pickle

  1. Make a syrup with 1 pound of sugar for each pound of fruit and 1 pound of cider vinegar.

  2. Boil the syrup, then add the cucumbers and cook until they are transparent.

  3. Add mace to taste.

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

  5. When the syrup is cool, 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. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Cider + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body of the pickle, which becomes translucent as they cook in the syrup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the vinegar, thickens the syrup that coats the pieces.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp tang.

The step that matters

Cooking the cucumbers until transparent. Cooking must be long enough to thicken the syrup and firm and clear the cucumber flesh, but not so long that the pieces turn soft and fall apart. Draining well before adding them keeps excess water from thinning the syrup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, sugar, cider, vinegar, mustard):

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

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

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes