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Ripe Cucumber Pickle

Pickles made from ripe cucumbers, vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ripe Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare and scrape out the insides of the cucumbers, then cut them lengthwise.

  2. Soak the cucumber pieces in weak brine for 24 hours.

  3. Remove the cucumbers, wipe them dry, and soak in weak vinegar for another 24 hours.

Cook and pickle

  1. In a pot, combine the cucumbers, vinegar, and sugar, and boil until the cucumbers are soft.

  2. Remove the cucumbers and add spices to the vinegar, boiling for a few minutes.

  3. Pour the spiced vinegar over the cucumbers. Optionally, add a little horse-radish sauce to preserve the vinegar.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the bulk of the pickle, and soften during boiling to take up the vinegar flavour.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the cucumbers until soft. Cucumbers that are under-boiled stay firm and fail to absorb the spiced vinegar, while over-boiling makes them mushy. Judge by texture, since the cucumbers must be soft but still hold their shape.

Swap the radish

The recipe marks radish as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, sugar, allspice, cinnamon, clove, horse):

  1. Mustardfits about as well
  2. Radishthe original
  3. Beetrootfits less well
  4. Horseradishfits less well

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