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Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber recipe using vinegar, spices, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice cucumber pickles lengthwise and crosswise.

  2. Slice onions thickly and soak them in salt water.

Make the pickles

  1. In a kettle, combine 1 quart of vinegar, brown sugar, and turmeric.

  2. Season the mixture with cinnamon, cloves, allspice, mace, mustard seeds, celery seed, and curry powder.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Add the cucumbers and onions, and boil until the cucumbers turn a rich citron color.

  5. Let the mixture cool, then transfer to jars and seal.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Turmeric + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 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

Cucumber pickles
Form the bulk of the dish and take on color and flavor from the spiced vinegar.
Onions
Add sharpness and sweetness, and soften slightly when soaked and simmered.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and sharpens the flavor.
Brown sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness with sweetness and adds depth.
Turmeric
Gives the pickles their characteristic yellow color.

The step that matters

Boil until the cucumbers turn a rich citron color. Boiling in the hot spiced vinegar lets color and flavor penetrate the cucumbers. Stopping too early leaves them pale and under-seasoned, while over-boiling can make them soft.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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