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Sweet Pickles

A pickled cucumber dish flavored with cloves, allspice, cinnamon, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the pickles.

  2. In a bowl, combine the cloves, allspice, and cinnamon.

Steep the pickles

  1. Pour the boiling vinegar over the spices.

  2. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Pour the mixture over the sliced pickles and let it stand until cold.

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. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Allspice + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Pickles
Form the bulk of the dish and soak up the spiced, sweetened vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that gives the pickles their tang and helps keep them firm.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cloves
Adds warm, pungent aroma and flavor to the vinegar.
Allspice
Adds warm aroma and flavor that blends clove and cinnamon notes.
Cinnamon
Adds sweet, warm aroma and flavor to the brine.

The step that matters

Let the pickles stand until cold. The pickles absorb the spiced vinegar as the liquid cools. Hot liquid soaks in faster, but the flavor settles as it cools, so cooling fully lets the spices penetrate the slices evenly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Clovethe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

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