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Kipe Cucumber Pickles

Pickled cucumbers preserved in a sweet and spiced syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Kipe Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Soak

  1. Peel the cucumbers and cut them into thin slices.

  2. Place the cucumber slices in a jar and cover them with cider vinegar.

  3. Let the cucumbers stand in the vinegar for 24 hours.

  4. Pour off the vinegar.

Make the syrup and pickle

  1. Prepare a syrup by adding 4 cups of sugar and spices to the vinegar.

  2. Boil the syrup.

  3. Cook the cucumbers in the syrup until they are slightly tender.

  4. Boil the syrup down for half an hour.

  5. Pour the hot syrup over the cucumbers.

  6. Let the pickles cool before using.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 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 bulk of the pickle and become tender when cooked in the syrup.
Cider vinegar
Acidity that softens the cucumbers and preserves the pickle.
Sugar
Sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and thickens the boiled syrup.
Cloves
Warm aroma carried into the syrup and absorbed by the cucumbers.
Cinnamon
Sweet, warm aroma that flavours the syrup and the pickles.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup down for half an hour. Reducing the syrup concentrates its sugar and vinegar, so the pickles stay firm and keep well. Boiling too briefly leaves a thin, watery syrup that spoils more easily.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cider, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon. 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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