Skip to main content
Main

Sweet Pickles

Sweet pickles are cucumbers preserved in a sweet vinegar and sugar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel the cucumbers and remove the seeds.

  2. Cut the cucumbers into strips and soak them in brine (½ cup coarse sea salt and water) for 24 hours.

Make the pickle

  1. Combine equal parts vinegar and water in a pot.

  2. Add the soaked cucumbers to the vinegar mixture.

  3. In a separate pot, combine 1 quart vinegar, 3 pounds coffee sugar, 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon, and whole cloves in a cloth.

  4. Boil the mixture until clear and the cucumbers are tender.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cucumber + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,319 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the pickle itself, softening into tender pieces during the final boil.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers during the soak, firming their texture.
Vinegar
Provides the sour bite that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Coffee sugar
Sweetens the pickle and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Ground cinnamon
Adds a warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds a spicy aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil until the cucumbers are tender and the syrup is clear. Heat softens the cucumber flesh and fully dissolves the sugar, so the syrup turns clear. Boiling too long can make the cucumber pieces mushy, while stopping too early leaves them firm.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, coffee, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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 sweet pickles recipes

Green Tomato 4 See all 85 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes