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Sweet Pickles

Sweet pickles are cucumbers preserved in a sugar and vinegar mixture with cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 874 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers lengthwise.

  2. Soak the cucumbers in brine water overnight.

Make the pickles

  1. Combine the sugar and vinegar in a bowl.

  2. Season the mixture with cinnamon.

  3. Add the cucumbers to the mixture and stir well.

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. Cucumber + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together874 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Vinegar + cinnamontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,187 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the body of the pickle and give it its crisp, firm bite.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickle its tang.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and spiced flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Soak the cucumbers in brine overnight. The salt in the brine draws water out of the cucumbers and firms their texture. A shorter soak or weaker brine can leave them soft after they are pickled.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, 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.

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