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Sour Pickles

A pickled cucumber and onion relish made with vinegar, sugar, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Sour Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers and onions

  1. Soak cucumbers in brine for 2 to 3 days.

  2. Scald the onions in strong salt water.

Make the sauce

  1. Add pepper, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon as desired.

  2. In a pot, scald vinegar, brown sugar, flour, and ground mustard, stirring constantly.

Pack and seal

  1. Pour the mixture over the pickles.

  2. Bottle in wide-mouthed bottles or glass jars and seal.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the pickles themselves, absorbing the brine and sour flavor during the long soak.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that defines the pickle and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and depth.
Flour
Thickens the hot vinegar mixture so it clings to the pickles.
Ground mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that rounds out the sweet-sour sauce.
Small onions
Contribute their own mild sharpness and texture to the jar.

The step that matters

Scalding the vinegar mixture while stirring constantly. Flour thickens only when heated and stirred, and without constant stirring it can clump or scorch on the bottom of the pot, leaving lumps in the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, clove, allspice, cinnamon, vinegar, sugar. 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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