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Cucumber Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made by boiling cucumbers with sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Cucumber Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Slice cucumbers into ¼ inch thick slices and soak them in salt water to remove excess salt.

  2. Boil the cucumbers in alum water for 30 minutes, then rinse them thoroughly to remove the alum taste.

  3. Boil the cucumbers in ginger tea for another 30 minutes.

Make the syrup

  1. In a separate pot, combine vinegar, water, and sugar to make a syrup.

  2. Add cinnamon, cloves, and mace to the syrup and boil until thickened.

Combine and cook

  1. Combine the cucumbers with the syrup and cook until well coated.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Ginger + teatop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Are the main body of the pickle, becoming tender and firm as they cook in the syrup.
Vinegar
Provides the sour, acidic base that preserves the pickle and balances the sweetness.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the syrup and thickens it as it boils down, coating the cucumbers.
Alum
Helps the cucumber slices stay firm during boiling, which is why it is used in soaking.

The step that matters

Boiling the cucumbers in alum water. Alum is a firming agent that tightens the cucumber's pectin structure, keeping slices crisp. Too long a boil or too much alum can leave a bitter, metallic taste, so rinsing afterward matters.

Swap the mace

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

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

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