Name: Cucumber Pickles
Ingredients: large green cucumbers; brine; seeded raisins; sliced lemon; twine; sugar (for syrup); cinnamon; cloves

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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Soak large green cucumbers in brine for 9 days.
If too salty, soak in fresh water for several hours.
Remove from water, cut lengthwise without cutting through.
Remove seeds and wipe cucumbers dry.
Fill the cavity with seeded raisins and sliced lemon.
Tie each cucumber with twine and place in a jar.
Prepare boiling syrup with equal parts sugar and water, adding cinnamon and cloves.
Pour the hot syrup over the cucumbers.
Once cold, drain the syrup, boil it again, and pour it over the cucumbers.
Ensure the cucumbers are well covered with syrup before sealing the jar.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cucumber + cinnamontop 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

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, lemon, sugar, syrup, cinnamon, clove):

Arrowrootfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Shallotfits better
Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, lemon, sugar, syrup, cinnamon, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.