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Greex Cucumber Pickles

A preserved cucumber pickle made with salt, vinegar, spices, and horse‑radish, boiled and jarred.

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

Greex Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine and soften

  1. Dissolve the salt in enough water to cover the cucumbers and pour it boiling hot over them.

  2. Let the cucumbers stand for 24 hours.

  3. Pour off the brine.

  4. Reheat the brine for two successive mornings.

  5. On the fourth morning, drain the brine.

  6. Pour boiling water over the cucumbers.

  7. Let them stand for another 24 hours.

  8. If they are not plump, pour boiling water over them again.

Pack and pickle

  1. Once the cucumbers are plump, pack them in a jar with bags of allspice, cloves, cinnamon, and mustard.

  2. Add a little horse‑radish root among the cucumbers.

  3. Heat the vinegar with a piece of dissolved alum.

  4. Pour the hot vinegar over the cucumbers.

  5. Cover the jar tightly.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 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 pickle itself, becoming firm and crisp as the brine and vinegar work on them.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them through the brine.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that defines the pickle and helps preserve it.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during pickling.

The step that matters

Reheating the brine and re-pouring boiling water. Each boiling-hot pour and reheating softens and firms the cucumbers while salt draws out water. Cucumbers that stay soft or soggy usually need another boiling-water pour, as the method directs.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, allspice, clove, cinnamon, mustard, horse, radish):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Cucumberthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Broccolifits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, allspice, clove, cinnamon, mustard, horse, radish. 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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