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Sweet Pickles

Pickled cucumbers with cabbage, peppers, onions, mustard, turmeric, celery seed, brown sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Soak cucumbers in cold water for one day.

  2. Place cucumbers in brine overnight.

  3. Dry each cucumber.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar with all ingredients except cucumbers and bring to a boil.

  2. Add cucumbers to the boiling mixture and steam for 30 minutes without boiling.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Turmeric + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 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

Cucumbers
Make up the bulk of the pickles and absorb the sweet, spiced vinegar mixture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickles.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Steaming the cucumbers without boiling. If the mixture boils hard, the cucumbers can soften and break down. Keeping it at a gentle steam for 30 minutes helps them stay firm while they take up the flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cabbage, pepper, mustard, turmeric, celery, sugar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Cauliflowerfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cabbage, pepper, mustard, turmeric, celery, 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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