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Spiced Cucumber Pickles

Pickled cucumbers flavored with peppers, mace, and cloves, preserved in vinegar and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Spiced Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Wash the cucumbers and place them in a stone jar.

  2. Make a brine with 2 pounds of coarse sea salt and pour it over the cucumbers in the jar.

  3. Let the cucumbers sit in the brine for 36 hours.

  4. Remove the cucumbers from the jar and discard the brine.

Scald and drain

  1. Cover the cucumbers with boiling water and let them stand for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the cucumbers for 1 hour.

Pickle

  1. Place the cucumbers in a jar and mix in the chopped peppers.

  2. Boil 1 gallon of vinegar with whole peppers, mace, and cloves for 15 minutes.

  3. Skim out the spices from the hot vinegar and pour the hot vinegar over the cucumbers.

  4. Cover the jar with a plate and a stone to weigh it down, then cover the jar with another plate.

  5. Do not disturb the jar for about a week.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cucumber + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,319 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

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; brining firms and seasons them for a crisp texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the brine.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Whole mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling vinegar.
Whole cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling vinegar.

The step that matters

Brining the cucumbers for 36 hours. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers through osmosis. Too short a brine leaves them soft and watery, while the salt levels set the texture and seasoning before the vinegar is added.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, pepper, clove. 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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