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Sweet Cucumber Pickles

A sweet pickle made by boiling cucumbers in vinegar with sugar, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and alum, then storing in a crock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Soak cucumbers in strong brine for 3 days.

  2. Pour off brine and freshen cucumbers in water for 3 days, changing the water each day.

  3. Slice cucumbers into thick chunks.

Cook and store

  1. Bring cucumbers to a boil in weak vinegar with a small piece of alum.

  2. Remove and drain the cucumbers.

  3. Bring cucumbers to a boil in the spiced vinegar for 3 consecutive days.

  4. Store pickles in a stone crock.

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. 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. Cucumber + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together501 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickle; brining firms the flesh so it holds its shape in hot vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness and adds sweetness to the finished pickles.
Alum
Helps keep the cucumber pieces firm and crisp during repeated heating.

The step that matters

Bring cucumbers to a boil in the spiced vinegar for 3 consecutive days.. Repeated heating in the spiced syrup draws in sweetness and spice gradually, while brief boiling keeps the cucumbers from turning soft. Overcooking breaks down the cell walls and makes the pickles mushy.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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

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