Name: Ripe Cucumber Pickle
Ingredients: Cucumbers; Salt; Sugar; Vinegar

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

Cucumbers
Salt
Sugar
Vinegar

Directions

Pare and scrape out the inside of the cucumbers.
Soak the cucumbers in a weak brine for 24 hours.
Make a syrup by boiling sugar and vinegar together.
Boil a few slices of the cucumber at a time in the syrup until they look clear.
Once all cucumbers are cooked, boil down the syrup and pour it 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.

Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Cucumber + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,112 recipes

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