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Ripe Cucumber Pickles

Pickled cucumbers prepared with vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Ripe Cucumber Pickles

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ripe Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare and cut cucumbers into strips, removing the seeds.

  2. Soak cucumbers in weak brine for 12 hours, then drain.

  3. Scald cucumbers in alum water until clear, then wash in cold water and drain well.

Cook and pack

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and mace; bring to a boil.

  2. Add cucumbers and boil until a straw can pierce them.

  3. Pack cucumbers into glass jars.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Cucumber + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together874 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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; the brine and syrup soften and flavor them while they keep a firm bite.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers in the brine, helping them stay crisp.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp taste.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boil until a straw can pierce the cucumbers. Boiling softens the cucumbers enough to become tender, but over-boiling turns them mushy. Testing with a straw checks texture directly rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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