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Eaisin Pickle

A cucumber pickle with raisins, vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Eaisin Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the spices, sugar, and vinegar together to create a rich syrup.

  2. Add the raisins and cook until they are plump and clear.

Pour and finish

  1. Pour the mixture over the chopped cucumbers.

  2. If the syrup does not cover the pickles, add another quart of vinegar along with more spices and sugar.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Celery + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Become plump and clear in the syrup, adding chewy body and concentrated sweetness to the pickle.
Light-brown sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their tang.
Cucumber pickles
Form the crisp, sour-sweet base that the hot syrup soaks into.

The step that matters

Keep the pickles fully covered by the syrup. Pickles that stick out above the liquid are exposed to air and can spoil or mold. Topping up with more vinegar, spices, and sugar keeps every piece submerged in the acidic syrup, which is what preserves them.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, cucumber, vinegar, sugar, mustard, celery, 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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