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Sweet Cucumber Pickles

A pickle made by boiling cucumbers in vinegar syrup with sugar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Sweet Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare the cucumbers, scrape out the seeds, and cut them into proper sizes.

  2. Boil the cucumbers in water with a little alum until soft.

Make the syrup and pickle

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

  2. Add the cucumbers to the syrup and boil until clear.

  3. Pack the cucumbers into sealers and cover with the 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.

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. Allspice + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together501 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Cinnamon + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together874 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

Cucumbers
Provide the main body of the pickles, which soften during boiling and take on the syrup's flavor.
Vinegar
Supplies the acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickles.
White sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness and gives the syrup its sweetness.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers firm up during the initial boil.

The step that matters

Boiling the cucumbers in the syrup until clear. Boil long enough for the cucumbers to become translucent and absorb the syrup, but not so long that they turn mushy and lose their shape. Watching for clarity signals that the syrup has penetrated the flesh.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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