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Sweet Dill Pickle

A sweet pickle made by boiling dill pickles with sugar, vinegar, and spices, then repeatedly reheating the syrup over the pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Sweet Dill Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the vinegar, sugar, and mixed spices to make a thick syrup.

Pour and repeat

  1. Put the pickles in jars and pour the syrup over them.

  2. The next day, drain off the syrup, reheat it, and pour it over the pickles.

  3. Repeat this process for 3 days.

Seal

  1. Seal the jars.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Dill + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together659 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Dill + cidertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + cidertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Makes the syrup thick and sweet, and helps preserve the pickles.
Cider vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the pickles.
Mixed spices
Add aroma and flavor to the syrup, which the pickles absorb over repeated pours.

The step that matters

Reheat the syrup before each pour. Boiling the vinegar and sugar dissolves the sugar fully and keeps the syrup thick and hot. A cooled syrup penetrates the pickles less well, so the flavor and sweetness build up less over the three days.

Swap the dill

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Dillthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cider, 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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