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Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber recipe with a brine, spices, and a vinegar-based spice mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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 ↓

Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the cucumbers

  1. Make a brine that will float an egg and soak cucumbers in it for 10 days.

  2. Remove cucumbers from brine and drain them.

  3. Soak cucumbers in clear water overnight.

Green the cucumbers

  1. After draining, place cucumbers in a kettle with grape and cabbage leaves and 1 teaspoon of alum.

  2. Cover with vinegar diluted with water and simmer until cucumbers turn a pretty green color.

  3. Remove from heat, cool, and drain.

Pack and spice

  1. Pack cucumbers into a 3-gallon jar.

  2. In 1 quart of vinegar, combine mace, cloves, cinnamon, mustard seed, celery seed, black pepper, allspice, ground mustard, horseradish, pepper pods, onions, ginger, and sugar.

  3. Boil the spice mixture and pour it over the pickles.

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

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

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

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

  4. Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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; they soften during curing and keep their shape and crispness when pickled.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickles.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar and spices with sweetness.
Alum
Firms the cucumber flesh so it stays crisp during pickling.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that deepens as the pickles stand.

The step that matters

Curing in the egg-floating brine. If the brine is too weak to float an egg, the cucumbers may not cure properly and can spoil. The brine's salt draws water out of the cucumbers, which firms them and helps preserve them before pickling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, grape, cabbage, clove, cinnamon, mustard):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, grape, cabbage, clove, cinnamon, mustard. 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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