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Gherkin or Small Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using grape leaves, alum, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gherkin or Small Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Layer gherkins with coarse sea salt in a large earthenware crock, covering with cold water.

  2. Place a weighted plate on top to keep gherkins submerged and leave in brine for at least 10 days, stirring every other day.

  3. After 10 days, pour off the brine, discard any softened gherkins, and soak the firm ones in fresh water for 2 days, changing the water once.

Steam and firm

  1. Line a kettle with grape leaves, layer the gherkins, and sprinkle a heaping teaspoon of powdered alum over each layer.

  2. Cover with cold water, add a triple thickness of grape leaves, and steam over low heat for 6 hours without boiling.

  3. After steaming, transfer gherkins to very cold water to firm them up.

Pickle and store

  1. Boil vinegar, sugar, cloves, black peppercorns, allspice, and mace together for 5 minutes.

  2. Drain the gherkins and pack them into jars, pouring the hot vinegar mixture over them and sealing the jars.

  3. Store in a cool, dark place; they will be ready to use in about 2 months.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Grape + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Grape + allspicetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together753 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Firm small gherkins
Form the crisp, firm body of the pickle once salted and steamed.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the gherkins during brining, firming the texture and preserving them.
Powdered alum
Hardens the cucumber tissue so the pickles stay crisp through steaming.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives their sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Steaming without boiling. Holding the water just below a boil keeps the gherkins from going soft and mushy, which vigorous boiling would cause over six hours.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grape, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice. 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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