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Spiced Cucumber Pickles

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Spiced Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Prepare the cucumbers by freshening them as for sour pickles.

  2. For summer pickles, dissolve 1 cup of coarse sea salt in 1 gallon of boiling water.

  3. While still hot, add the cucumbers and let them stand overnight.

  4. Remove the cucumbers, rinse off the brine, and drain on a cloth while preparing the vinegar.

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, allspice, brown sugar, black pepper, cloves, celery seed, cinnamon, mustard seed, and mace.

  2. Boil the mixture for 10 to 15 minutes.

Pack and seal

  1. Place the pickles in jars and divide the spices among them.

  2. Pour the hot spiced vinegar over the pickles and seal the jars immediately.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the pickles themselves, taking on flavour and crispness from the brine and vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the overnight brine.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Seal the jars immediately after pouring the hot vinegar. Hot vinegar helps drive air out of the jar and seal it as it cools. Sealing promptly keeps air and microbes out, which helps the pickles keep.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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