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Cucumber Pickles

A preserved cucumber dish made with vinegar, sugar, spices, and brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Make a brine that will float an egg.

  2. Heat it until boiling and pour it over the cucumbers.

  3. Let them stand for 24 hours.

  4. Make a cold brine.

  5. Let it stand for 48 hours.

  6. Wipe the black specks from each cucumber.

Make the pickling syrup

  1. In a brass kettle, combine the cucumbers with enough cold vinegar to cover them.

  2. Heat slowly, turning them from the bottom several times, and let them stand for 24 hours.

  3. If needed, add more vinegar to cover the cucumbers.

  4. In a muslin bag, combine the brown sugar, mustard seed, cloves, stick cinnamon, green peppers, celery seed, ginger root, and alum.

  5. Scald this mixture with vinegar.

  6. Pour the hot mixture over the cucumbers.

  7. Add green grapes and horseradish when cool.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp body of the pickle, which the brine and vinegar firm and preserve.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, slightly bitter flavor to the pickling liquid.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during pickling.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Heat slowly and let stand for 24 hours. Heating the cucumbers slowly, while turning them, lets heat penetrate evenly without softening the skins too quickly. Overheating can make the cucumbers mushy and uneven.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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