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Ripe Cucumber Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made by boiling cucumbers with sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Ripe Cucumber Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare the cucumbers and remove the pulp.

  2. Cut them into strips about 2 inches wide and 3 inches long.

Cook and seal

  1. Boil the sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, and cloves together and skim off any foam.

  2. Add the cucumber strips and cook until tender.

  3. Remove the cucumbers and let the liquid cook for an additional 15 minutes.

  4. Fill the jars with the cucumbers and seal them.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cucumber + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,319 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 into tender strips when simmered.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, dissolved in the liquid, builds a thick, sweet syrup.
Vinegar
Supplies the sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aroma to the syrup and cucumbers.
Cloves
Adds a pungent, warm aroma that deepens the spiced flavour of the syrup.

The step that matters

Add the cucumber strips and cook until tender.. Cucumber flesh softens quickly in hot syrup and can turn mushy if overcooked. Removing the strips once tender, then reducing the liquid separately, keeps their texture intact.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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