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Sliced Cucumber Pickles

Pickled cucumbers simmered in a vinegar and spice mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sliced Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Slice the cucumbers and place them in a large pot with enough vinegar to cover them.

  2. Boil the cucumbers for 1 hour.

  3. Let the cucumbers sit in the hot vinegar.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a separate pot, combine the sugar, spices, and 1 gallon of cider vinegar.

  2. Add the sliced cucumbers to the mixture.

  3. Simmer the mixture for 2 hours.

Jar

  1. Transfer the pickles into jars for storage.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickle and soften as they absorb the hot vinegar and spices.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp, tangy flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Simmer the mixture for 2 hours. Long simmering softens the cucumbers and lets the spices and vinegar flavor them fully. Simmering too long, however, can break the cucumbers down until they turn mushy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cider, vinegar, sugar, allspice, clove, garlic. 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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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