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Sweet Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe with vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Cut cucumbers lengthwise and remove seeds.

  2. Soak cucumbers in a mixture of salt and water for 24 hours.

  3. Soak cucumbers in vinegar and water for another 24 hours.

  4. Drain cucumbers.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves to make a syrup.

  2. Boil the syrup until it thickens and the cucumbers are 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  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. Cucumber + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,319 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Ripe cucumbers
Form the main body of the pickles, becoming tender and crisp-textured through brining and cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers during soaking, firming their texture and seasoning them.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickles and sharpens the sweet syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickles and, as the syrup boils down, thickens it into a glaze.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds pungent, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until it thickens and the cucumbers are tender. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugar and vinegar, so the syrup thickens. Cooking too briefly leaves it thin and the cucumbers underdone, while overcooking can make them soft and the syrup overly sticky.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

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