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Congress Pickles

A brined cucumber pickle made with salt, vinegar, spices, sugar, mustard, peppers, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, celery seed, and alum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Congress Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Wash the cucumbers and sprinkle 1 pint of fine salt over them.

  2. Pour boiling hot water over the cucumbers to cover them and let them stand for 48 hours.

  3. Remove the cucumbers from the brine, wipe them dry, and place them in jars.

Make the pickle

  1. Pour scalding hot vinegar over the cucumbers along with your chosen spices.

  2. If the vinegar becomes tasteless, replace it with fresh vinegar before using.

  3. Prepare a mixture of fresh vinegar, 1 quart brown sugar, 2 large green peppers, ½ pint white mustard, ginger root, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, 1 tablespoon celery seed, and alum.

  4. Scald this mixture together and pour it boiling hot 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.

  1. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 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
Main vegetable that becomes crisp, pickled, and seasoned by the brine and vinegar.
Fine salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers during the brine, firming their texture.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickling liquid.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavor that balances the sharp vinegar.
White mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Scald the pickling mixture and pour it boiling hot. Heating the vinegar and sugar mixture dissolves the sugar and carries the spice flavors into the cucumbers. Pouring it boiling hot helps the cucumbers take up the liquid and keeps the pickle safe to store.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, pepper, mustard, ginger, cinnamon, allspice):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, pepper, mustard, ginger, cinnamon, 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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