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Cucumber Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made by curing cucumbers in a sugar and vinegar syrup with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Cucumber Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare the cucumbers and remove the seeds.

  2. Cut the cucumbers into small pieces.

  3. Soak the pieces overnight in weak saltwater.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by boiling the sugar and vinegar with the spices tied in a bag for 20 minutes.

Cook and pack

  1. Drain the cucumbers.

  2. Dry the cucumbers with a cloth.

  3. Boil the cucumbers in the syrup until they are soft and transparent.

  4. Skim out the cucumbers from the syrup.

  5. Drain the cucumbers.

  6. Place the cucumbers in a stone jar.

  7. Boil the syrup until it thickens to the consistency of molasses.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Cucumber + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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, softening and turning translucent when simmered in the syrup.
Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and, as the syrup reduces, a thick molasses-like body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp flavour and helps preserve it.
Mixed spices
Contribute aroma and warm flavour to the syrup, which the cucumbers absorb.

The step that matters

Boil the cucumbers in the syrup until soft and transparent. Heat softens the cucumber's cell walls and sugar draws water out of them, so they turn translucent. Boiling too long makes them mushy and collapsed, so they should be removed as soon as they reach that stage.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Cucumberthe original
  4. Beetrootfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar. 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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