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Cucumber Pickle

Cucumbers pickled in spiced cider vinegar with mace, cloves, peppers, and other spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Soak cucumbers in cold water until salt is extracted.

  2. Add vinegar and simmer until cucumbers turn a pretty green color.

  3. Spread cucumbers on a dish to cool.

  4. Once cooled, place cucumbers in clear vinegar for several days.

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. Prepare spiced vinegar by adding mace, cloves, long peppers, black pepper, cinnamon, celery seed, white mustard seed, black mustard seed, grated horseradish, garlic, and raisins to one gallon of cider vinegar.

  2. If desired, dissolve brown sugar in the spiced vinegar to sweeten.

  3. Combine the syrup with the spiced vinegar.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The main vegetable being pickled, absorbing flavor from the spiced vinegar over several days.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the pickle.
Grated horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent bite that fades as the pickle rests.
White mustard seed
Contributes a mild, tangy pungency to the spiced vinegar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Simmering the cucumbers until pretty green. Heat and acid change the green chlorophyll in cucumbers. Brief simmering keeps the color bright, while longer cooking turns it dull and leaves the flesh soft.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cider, vinegar, clove, pepper, cinnamon, 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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