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Sweet Pickled Cucumbers

A preserved cucumber dish flavored with sugar, cider vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sweet Pickled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers into thick slices.

  2. In a pot, combine sugar, vinegar, and spices, and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the cucumbers and simmer over low heat, turning gently until cooked but not soft.

  4. Remove from heat and let sit overnight.

Boil and rest

  1. The next day, bring the cucumbers to a boil again and let cool.

  2. Repeat the boiling process the following morning.

Jar and store

  1. Carefully place the cucumbers in jars.

  2. Boil the liquid until it reduces enough to cover the cucumbers.

  3. Pour the hot liquid over the cucumbers, seal the jars, and store in a cool, dry place.

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

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

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Cucumber + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together874 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp-tender pickled body that soaks up the sweet, sour syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, in quantity, helps preserve it and thicken the syrup.
Cider vinegar
Adds the sour acidity that defines the pickle and helps preserve it.
Cinnamon stick
Contributes warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Cloves
Contribute warm, pungent aroma to the syrup.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Simmering the cucumbers gently. Cucumbers turn soft and mushy if overcooked, so they should be turned gently over low heat only until just cooked. Repeated boiling over several days then firms and preserves them while the syrup penetrates.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

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