Name: Eaisin and Cucumber Pickle
Ingredients: 2 lbs raisins; 2 quarts vinegar; 5 dozen pickled cucumbers; 4 sticks cinnamon; 2 ½ lbs brown sugar; 2 teaspoons whole cloves; 2 teaspoons allspice

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 ↓

Eaisin and Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut cucumbers into 1‑inch pieces and remove seeds from cucumbers.

Make the pickle

In a pot, boil cinnamon, brown sugar, allspice, and cloves in the vinegar.
Once boiling, add raisins and cucumbers, and cook for 30 minutes.
Transfer to jars and seal.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Cucumber + allspicetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together501 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

Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy texture to the pickle.
Vinegar: Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Pickled cucumbers: Supply the crisp-tart pieces that give the pickle its body.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and depth, balancing the vinegar's sharpness.

Swap the raisin

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

Quincefits better
Limefits better
Cherryfits better
Raisinthe original

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