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Sweet Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber recipe with onions, sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sweet Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Soak the cucumbers in cold water overnight.

  2. Wash the cucumbers, wipe them dry, and slice them very thin.

  3. Slice the onions lengthwise and add them to the cucumbers.

  4. Sprinkle the salt over the cucumbers and let them stand for 1 hour.

Make the pickling liquid and jar

  1. In a pot, combine the vinegar, sugar, celery seed, ground ginger, turmeric powder, and mustard seed.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil for 3 minutes.

  3. Pour the hot mixture into jars and seal them.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 give it a crisp, crunchy texture when salted.
Onions
Add savory flavor and a little sharpness that mellows during pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, firming them and helping them stay crisp.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their tang.
Sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness and adds sweetness to the pickling liquid.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Salting the cucumbers. Salt draws moisture out of the cucumbers through osmosis. Rinsing and drying them well afterward keeps the excess salt from making the pickles overly salty and helps them stay firm.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, sugar, celery, ginger, turmeric, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar, celery, ginger, turmeric, mustard. 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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