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Six Hundred Cucumbers

A pickled cucumber recipe using vinegar, alum, brown sugar, mustard seed, cloves, cinnamon, peppers, celery seed, ginger, grapes, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Six Hundred Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Make a brine that will float an egg.

  2. Boil the brine.

  3. Pour the boiled brine over the cucumbers.

  4. Let the cucumbers stand for 24 hours, or use a cold brine and let stand for 48 hours.

Prepare and heat

  1. Wipe the black specks from each cucumber.

  2. Cover cucumbers with vinegar and add a small lump of alum.

  3. Place cucumbers in a brass kettle with cold vinegar.

  4. Heat slowly.

  5. Turn them from the bottom several times.

  6. Let them stand for 24 hours.

  7. If needed, add 3 gallons of vinegar to cover the cucumbers.

Spice and finish

  1. In a muslin bag, tie together 3 pints of brown sugar, 3 cups of mustard seed, a handful of cloves, a handful of stick cinnamon, 6 green peppers, 1 tablespoon of celery seed, ginger root, and a piece of alum the size of a walnut.

  2. Scald the spice bag with vinegar.

  3. Pour the scalded spice bag over the hot cucumbers.

  4. Add green grapes and horseradish when cold.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Main vegetable that softens and absorbs the brine and vinegar flavours during pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, slightly bitter flavour that infuses into the pickling liquid.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm during pickling.

The step that matters

Heat slowly. Heating the cucumbers gently keeps them firm; rapid boiling softens the flesh and makes the pickles limp.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

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