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Unique Preserve

A preserved cucumber recipe using brine, vine leaves, citron, raisins, ginger, and a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and ginger work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 973 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Unique Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Soak young cucumbers in strong brine for one week.

  2. Wash the cucumbers.

  3. Soak the cucumbers in clear water for one day and night, changing the water four times.

  4. Line a bell metal kettle with vine leaves.

  5. Place the cucumbers inside the kettle.

  6. Scatter a little alum among the cucumbers.

  7. Fill the kettle with clear water.

  8. Cover the kettle with vine leaves.

  9. Seal the kettle with a lid.

  10. Do not boil the kettle.

  11. Once the cucumbers are well greened, drop them into ice water until perfectly cold.

  12. Wipe the cucumbers.

  13. Slit down one side of each cucumber with a small knife to remove the seeds.

  14. Stuff the cucumbers with a mixture of chopped citron and seedless raisins.

  15. Sew up the incisions with fine thread.

  16. Weigh the stuffed cucumbers.

Make the syrup and preserve

  1. Prepare a syrup using 1 pound of sugar and 1 pint of water for each pound of cucumbers.

  2. Heat the syrup to a lively boil and skim it.

  3. Drop the cucumbers into the syrup and simmer for half an hour.

  4. Remove the cucumbers from the syrup and spread them on a dish in the sun.

  5. Boil down the syrup with a few slices of ginger-root until thick.

  6. Return the cucumbers to the syrup and simmer for 5 minutes.

  7. Place the cucumbers in glass jars.

  8. Seal the jars when cool.

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 + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together973 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Cucumber + raisintop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Young cucumbers
Form the bulk of the preserve, becoming firm and crisp after brining and greening.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it thickens the syrup, helps preserve the fruit.
Alum
Firms the cucumber tissue so it stays crisp through long cooking.
Seedless raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the citron stuffing.
Chopped citron
Adds aromatic, slightly bitter citrus flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Do not boil the kettle during greening. Boiling the cucumbers in the greening liquor would soften their tissue and break it down, so they would lose the firm, crisp texture the preserve depends on. Keeping the liquid below boiling lets them green gently while staying intact.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, raisin. 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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