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Ripe Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber prepared with sugar, cassia buds, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Ripe Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and seed the cucumbers.

  2. Slice each cucumber lengthwise into four pieces or cut into fancy shapes.

Pickle and cook

  1. Cover with cold vinegar and let stand for 24 hours.

  2. Drain and place in fresh vinegar with sugar and cassia buds.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes and transfer to jars.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Cucumber + cassiatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Cassia + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Sugar + cassiatop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body of the pickle, which softens and takes on the flavor of the brine.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Cassia buds
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes and transfer to jars. Boiling the cucumbers in the sugared vinegar lets the syrup penetrate and the acid work to preserve them. Stopping too early or letting the liquid cool before jarring can leave the pickles less preserved and less flavorful.

Swap the cassia

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Cassiathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, sugar, vinegar. 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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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