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Sweet Green Cucumber Pickles

A sweet pickle made by soaking cucumbers in a sugar and vinegar brine, then boiling with spices and optional whisky.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Sweet Green Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine and syrup

  1. Soak cucumbers in weak salt water for 24 hours.

  2. Combine sugar, apple vinegar, and water in a granite kettle and bring to a boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the boiling mixture over the cucumbers and let stand for 24 hours.

Second soak

  1. Heat the mixture again, then pour it over the cucumbers and let stand for another 24 hours.

Spice and pack

  1. Add cloves, spice, and cinnamon to the mixture and boil it.

  2. Pour the syrup over the cucumbers.

  3. Place the cucumbers in jars.

  4. Boil the syrup until thick.

  5. Pour the thick syrup over the pickles.

Age

  1. Let stand for 3 weeks before using.

  2. Add ½ cup of whisky to the syrup during the last boil.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Apple + whiskytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together96 recipes

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

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; the salt soak firms the flesh and draws out water.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the pickles.
Apple vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the pickles.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Too short a boil leaves the syrup thin and watery, while over-boiling concentrates the sugar until it turns sticky or hard. Watching the thickness keeps the syrup coating the pickles.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apple, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, whisky. 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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