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Sweet Cucumber Pickle

A pickle made by curing cucumbers in a sweetened vinegar brine with cinnamon and cloves.

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

Sweet Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare the cucumbers and remove the seeds.

  2. Cut them into strips and soak in weak brine for 24 hours.

  3. Soak the cucumbers in vinegar for another 24 hours.

Cook and store

  1. Prepare sweetened vinegar by combining 1½ quarts of vinegar with 4 cups of brown sugar, and add a tablespoon of ground cinnamon tied in a cloth and a few whole cloves.

  2. Cook the cucumbers in the sweetened vinegar until tender.

  3. Store in jars.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cucumber + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,319 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Ripe cucumbers
Form the main body of the pickle, becoming tender and crisp-textured after soaking and cooking.
Weak brine
Softens and seasons the cucumber strips during the initial soak.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that preserves and flavours the pickle.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the sweetened vinegar syrup.
Whole cloves
Adds a spiced aroma to the sweetened vinegar syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the cucumbers in the sweetened vinegar until tender. Cooking must be stopped once the strips are tender; overcooking breaks down the cell structure so the pickle turns mushy, while undercooking leaves it firm and underpenetrated by the syrup.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

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