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Pickled Cucumbers

Pickled cucumbers preserved in brine, vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Pickled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Quarter the ripe cucumbers and remove the seeds.

  2. Soak the cucumbers in brine for nine days, stirring daily.

  3. After nine days, rinse the cucumbers in clear water for one day.

Firm with alum

  1. Prepare alum-water by dissolving a lump of alum in one gallon of water and soak the cucumbers overnight.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Make a syrup with one pint of cider vinegar, two tablespoons of brown sugar, cinnamon, mace, and pepper.

  2. Combine three pints of sugar with one quart of vinegar to create enough syrup to cover the cucumbers.

  3. Add the cucumbers to the syrup and cook until tender.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 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

Ripe cucumbers
The main vegetable, which softens during curing and cooking into a pickle.
Alum
Helps the cucumber flesh stay firm through soaking and cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and helps preserve it in the syrup.
Cider vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the pickles their tang and helps preserve them.
Cinnamon bark
Adds warm, spiced aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the cucumbers in the syrup until tender. Cooking stops once the cucumbers are tender, because prolonged heat breaks down pectin and cell walls, leaving them soft and mushy. Watch closely so they keep their shape.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, egg, cider, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, pepper. 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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