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Cucumber Pickle

Pickled cucumbers preserved in a brine of salt, vinegar, onions, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Place the cucumbers in a jar.

  2. Make a brine with 2 cups of salt and pour it hot over the cucumbers.

  3. Close the jar tightly and let it sit for three days.

Add the vinegar and spices

  1. Add 4 quarts of vinegar and 1 dozen small onions to the jar.

  2. Tie the ground spices in a bag and add it along with the onions.

  3. Pour the hot vinegar over the cucumbers and close the jar tightly.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, firm body that the pickling brine and vinegar act upon.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons the brine, firming the texture.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp, tangy flavour.
Small onions
Add mild sweetness and savoury body as they soften in the vinegar.
Ground spices
Cloves, cinnamon and allspice add warm aroma that infuses into the vinegar.

The step that matters

Brining the cucumbers for three days. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers through osmosis, which firms their texture and helps them stay crisp. Sealing the jar keeps the brine in contact with the cucumbers for the full period.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, allspice, pepper, celery. 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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