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Sweet Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using vinegar, sugar, spices, and a two-step soaking process.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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. Cut the cucumbers lengthwise and remove the seeds.

  2. Soak the cucumbers in salt and water for 24 hours.

  3. Soak the cucumbers in vinegar and water for another 24 hours.

  4. Drain the cucumbers.

Make the spiced syrup

  1. Combine 1 quart vinegar, 1 pound sugar, 1 ounce cinnamon, and ½ ounce cloves in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture until tender.

  3. Peel and cut the cucumbers into lengthwise slices.

  4. Scald together 1 gallon vinegar, 2 pounds sugar, 1 red pepper, and 1 ounce cassia buds in a separate pot.

Pack and seal

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles in a jar.

  2. Seal the jar.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + cassiatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  3. Clove + cassiatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  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 pickles' body, which softens and takes on the sweet-spiced flavour during soaking.
Sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and firms their texture during the first soak.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the pickles and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds pungent, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the spiced mixture until tender. Boiling the cucumbers in the spiced vinegar syrup must be timed carefully: too little heat leaves them firm and under-flavoured, while overcooking makes them mushy, since prolonged heat breaks down the cucumber's pectin-rich cell walls.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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