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Raisin Pickles

A pickled cucumber and raisin mixture flavored with mustard, spices, and brown sugar.

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 ↓

Raisin Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Soak fresh cucumbers in salt water overnight if using them.

  2. If using pickled cucumbers, chop them.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, spices, and brown sugar.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Add raisins to the boiling mixture and cook until clear.

Combine

  1. Pour the mixture over the prepared cucumbers in a large vessel and mix well.

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. Mustard + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness that softens as they cook in the liquid.
Vinegar
Supplies the sharp acidity that defines the pickling liquid and helps preserve the cucumbers.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, bulky body that absorbs the flavour of the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Cooking the raisins until clear. Heat softens raisins and draws out their sugars, so cooking them too long can make them mushy and split. Watch for them to turn clear and plump, then stop.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, mustard, cucumber, celery, cinnamon, pepper, coffee. 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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