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Stuffed Sweet Pickles

Cucumbers stuffed with raisins, lemon, and spices, then pickled in vinegar and sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Stuffed Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Soak cucumbers in salt water for 9 days.

  2. Soak cucumbers in fresh water for 24 hours.

  3. Open cucumbers lengthwise and remove seeds.

Cook the pickles

  1. Layer cucumbers in a preserving pan with grape leaves, sprinkling 2 teaspoons of alum over each layer.

  2. Cover with equal parts vinegar and water, and scald until green.

Stuff and pack

  1. Juice 2 lemons and cut them into small cubes, including the rind.

  2. Fill cucumbers with lemon cubes and raisins, then tie or sew them closed.

  3. Place stuffed cucumbers in a jar and add ½ ounce of cloves and 1 ounce of broken cinnamon bark.

Make the syrup and finish

  1. Make a syrup with 1 pint of sugar and 1 pint of vinegar.

  2. Heat the syrup.

  3. Pour the syrup over the pickles every morning for 9 days, ensuring they are fully covered.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cucumber + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together874 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the body of the pickle, becoming crisp-tender and firm after soaking in brine.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during the long soaking and scalding.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that preserves the pickles and balances the sugar in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture inside each cucumber.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup and pickles.

The step that matters

Scalding the cucumbers until green. Scalding must be brief and controlled. Overheating softens the cucumbers and dulls their color, while too little heat leaves them underprocessed. Alum helps keep their texture firm during this heating.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, raisin, clove, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, raisin, clove, cinnamon, 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.

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