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Sliced Cucumber Pickle

A pickled cucumber recipe using vinegar, sugar, and spices, boiled and cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sliced Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Slice the cucumbers and boil them in enough vinegar to cover for 1 hour.

  2. Set the cucumbers aside in the hot vinegar.

  3. The next day, drain and discard the vinegar.

Cook and cool

  1. Add 1 gallon of vinegar, 1 pound of sugar, and the remaining ingredients to the cucumbers.

  2. Boil the mixture for 2 hours.

  3. Allow to cool before using.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the main body of the pickles, softening as they are boiled in vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickles.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, warm spice to the pickling liquid.
Turmeric
Gives the pickles a yellow colour and mild earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 2 hours. A long, steady boil lets the spices flavour the vinegar and softens the cucumbers. Boiling too briefly leaves the pickles raw-tasting and less infused, while boiling too hard can cook them to mush.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, sugar, ginger, garlic, pepper, turmeric):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar, ginger, garlic, pepper, turmeric. 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 →

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