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German Pickle

A pickled cucumber recipe using vinegar, water, sugar, cinnamon bark, and pimento.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 874 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

German Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel and remove the seeds from the cucumbers, then cut them lengthwise into 1-inch wide strips.

  2. In a bowl, soak the cucumber pieces in 3 cups of vinegar and 4 cups of water for 24 hours, stirring once or twice.

Make and jar the pickles

  1. In a pot, heat 1 quart of vinegar with 1 pint of sugar, a little cinnamon bark, and 1 teaspoon of pimento tied in a piece of cloth until scalding.

  2. Add the soaked cucumbers to the pot and boil until soft.

  3. Transfer the pickles into glass 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. Cucumber + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together874 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + cinnamontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,187 recipes

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

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, becoming tender and firm-textured when simmered in the syrup.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp, tangy flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and helps give the pickles their syrupy character.
Cinnamon bark
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Pimento
Adds a mild, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the cucumbers until soft. Cooking in the hot vinegar syrup softens the cucumber flesh, but overcooking can make it mushy. Watching for tenderness keeps the pieces intact while letting the syrup penetrate.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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