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Cucumbers

A sweet pickled cucumber preserved in a sugar, lemon, and ginger syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Select the greenest cucumbers, some small to preserve whole and others large to cut into pieces.

  2. Place cucumbers in a jar with strong salt and water, adding a cabbage leaf to keep them submerged.

  3. Set the jar in a warm place until cucumbers turn yellow.

  4. Wash the cucumbers and place them in fresh water with a little salt and a fresh cabbage leaf.

  5. Cover the jar tightly and heat without boiling.

  6. Change the water if the cucumbers are not a fine green.

  7. Once they are a good green, remove them from heat.

  8. Let the cucumbers cool.

  9. Cut large cucumbers into quarters, removing seeds and soft parts.

  10. Soak the cucumbers in cold water for two days, changing the water twice daily to remove salt.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine 1 pound of sugar and ½ pint of water, bring to a boil, skim, then add lemon rind and ginger.

  2. Cook the syrup until it thickens.

  3. Remove the syrup from heat and let it cool.

Pickle and store

  1. Wipe the cucumbers dry.

  2. Place the cucumbers in the cooled syrup.

  3. Boil the syrup every two to three days for three weeks, strengthening it if necessary.

  4. Ensure the syrup is cold before adding it to the cucumbers.

  5. Cover the cucumbers and store them in a dry place.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together545 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Cucumber + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together973 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green cucumbers
Provide the main body of the pickle, which firms and absorbs the syrup as it cures.
Strong salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and helps keep them firm during the initial brining.
Single-refined sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, as a thick syrup, helps preserve the cucumbers.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic citrus oils that flavour the syrup.
Ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Soak the cucumbers to remove salt. Leftover salt makes the pickle too salty and can draw out moisture unevenly, so the cucumbers must be soaked and the water changed until the excess salt has leached out before the sugar syrup is added.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, sugar, lemon, ginger):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, sugar, lemon, ginger. 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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