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Ripe Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber prepared by soaking, boiling in sugar and vinegar syrup, and then preserving in the syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Ripe Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and scrape out the inside of the cucumbers.

  2. Soak the cucumbers in a weak brine for 24 hours.

Make the pickles

  1. Make a syrup by boiling sugar and vinegar together.

  2. Boil a few slices of cucumber at a time in the syrup until they look clear.

  3. Boil down the syrup.

  4. Pour the syrup over the cucumbers.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Cucumber + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the pickle itself; their firm flesh softens and turns translucent as they cook in syrup.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, in the syrup, helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp flavour and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boil the cucumber slices until they look clear. Cooking in the syrup lets sugar replace water in the cucumber, so the slices turn translucent. Boil too briefly and they stay opaque and raw-tasting; boil too long and they turn soft and mushy.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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

More cucumber pickles recipes

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