Skip to main content
Main

Ripe Cucumber Pickles

Pickled cucumbers preserved in a sweet vinegar and spice syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Ripe Cucumber Pickles

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 ↓

Ripe Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel the cucumbers and cut them into quarters lengthwise. Remove the seeds and juicy pulp.

  2. Let them stand overnight in a weak brine made with the salt.

  3. Drain the cucumbers. Scald them slightly in clear water. Drain again.

Make the syrup and pickle

  1. Cook the cucumbers in a syrup made by boiling the sugar with hot water.

  2. Add the vinegar and spices in a cheese-cloth bag to the syrup.

  3. Put the pickles in sealers and cover them with the thickened syrup.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Large ripe cucumbers
Provide the main body and crisp-tender texture of the pickles.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers in the brine, firming their texture.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that defines the pickle's flavor and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, when boiled, thickens it to coat the pickles.

The step that matters

Thickening the syrup. Boiling the sugar, hot water, and vinegar together long enough concentrates the syrup. A thin syrup leaves the pickles watery and less well preserved.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes