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Cucumber Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made by boiling cucumbers with sugar, cider vinegar, mace, mustard seed, and alum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Boil the sliced cucumbers in weak alum water for 1 hour.

  2. Remove and place in cold water until completely cool.

  3. Boil again in fresh alum water for 30 minutes.

  4. Drain the cucumbers well.

Make the syrup and pickle

  1. Make a syrup with 1 pound of sugar for each pound of fruit and 1 pound of cider vinegar.

  2. Boil the syrup, then add the cucumbers and boil until transparent.

  3. Add mace to taste; if the syrup is not thick enough, continue boiling after removing the fruit.

  4. When cool, sprinkle in some white mustard seed.

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

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

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Cider + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The main fruit; boiling in syrup turns them transparent and tender-crisp.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it thickens the syrup, helps preserve the cucumbers.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp flavor and helps preserve it.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil until transparent, then thicken the syrup. Boiling the cucumbers in the syrup lets sugar slowly replace water in the fruit, making it clear. If the syrup stays thin, the pickle will be watery, so the syrup must be reduced until thick.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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