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Sweet Cucumber Pickles

A sweet pickle made by soaking cucumbers in salt, then brining them in vinegar and sugar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Sweet Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cucumbers lengthwise and remove the seeds.

  2. Soak the cucumbers in salt and water for 24 hours.

  3. Soak the cucumbers in vinegar and water for another 24 hours.

  4. Drain the cucumbers.

Make the syrup and cook the cucumbers

  1. In a pot, combine 1 quart vinegar, 1 pound sugar, 1 ounce cinnamon, and ½ ounce cloves to make a syrup.

  2. Boil the syrup until tender.

  3. Peel and cut the cucumbers into lengthwise slices.

  4. Steam the cucumber slices until tender.

Pickle and seal

  1. In a separate pot, scald together ½ gallon vinegar, 2 pounds sugar, 1 red pepper, and 1 ounce cassia buds.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles in a jar 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + cassiatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  3. Clove + cassiatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Cucumber + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together874 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the body of the pickle, becoming tender and absorbing the flavoured liquid.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet spice aroma and flavour to the syrup.
Cloves
Contributes pungent, warm aroma to the syrup.
Cassia buds
Adds a spiced aroma to the hot pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Soaking the cucumbers in salt and water for 24 hours. Salt draws water out of the cucumber through osmosis, firming the flesh so it stays crisp-tender later. The full soak matters because it controls how firm the pickle becomes and how much salt remains in it before the sweet vinegar syrup is added.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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