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Kalamazoo Pickles

Pickled cucumbers made with brown sugar, mustard seed, cinnamon, celery seed, alum, vinegar, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Kalamazoo Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Select cucumbers no longer than 2–3 inches and remove the flower end.

  2. Prepare a brine with 2 gallons of water and 1 pound of salt; cover cucumbers and let stand for 24 hours.

Pack and seal

  1. Drain the cucumbers and boil the vinegar, alum, and spices together.

  2. Pack the cucumbers tightly into jars, leaving no gaps.

  3. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the cucumbers and seal the jars immediately.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, bulky body of the pickle that the brine and vinegar penetrate.
Vinegar
Acidifies the liquid, preserving the cucumbers and giving the pickle its sharp flavour.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and adds depth of flavour.
Salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers during brining, firming their texture.
Alum
Hardens cell walls in the cucumbers, helping them stay crisp after processing.
White mustard seed
Contributes pungent, earthy flavour to the pickling liquid as its aromatic spice.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling vinegar mixture and seal immediately. Pouring boiling liquid over the cucumbers and sealing at once keeps the jars hot and helps create a vacuum seal, which limits spoilage by air-borne microbes. Delay lets the contents cool and weakens the seal.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, sugar, mustard, cinnamon, 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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