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Cucumber Pickles

A simple vinegar-based cucumber pickle with cloves, allspice, alum, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover cucumbers with water and add salt.

  2. In the morning, drain the water.

  3. Measure out the same amount of vinegar as water used.

Make the pickles

  1. Combine vinegar, cloves, allspice, and alum in a pot and heat until boiling.

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the cucumbers.

  3. Add sugar to the vinegar for sweet pickles if desired.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cucumber + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Allspice + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cucumber + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together501 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  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
The vegetable being pickled; it softens and takes on the flavor of the brine.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickles their sharp taste.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers keep a firm, crisp texture during pickling.
Whole cloves
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.
Allspice
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the sharpness of the vinegar in sweet pickles.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling mixture over the cucumbers. The mixture must be fully boiling when poured. Hot, acidic liquid penetrates the cucumbers quickly and begins preserving them, while a cooler brine would soak in more slowly and leave the pickles less safely preserved.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Lentilsfits about as well

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

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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