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Preserved Cucumbers

A preserved cucumber recipe using vine leaves, alum, mace, lemon, sugar, and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Preserved Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Grease cucumbers with vine leaves and alum.

  2. Wipe the cucumbers dry.

  3. Season the inside with bruised mace and lemon peel.

  4. Tie the piece that was removed back on with pack-thread.

Make the syrup

  1. For every pound of cucumbers, add a pound of loaf sugar and ½ cup of water.

  2. Add the beaten egg white for every four pounds of cucumbers.

  3. Boil the mixture.

  4. Skim the mixture until clear, adding sliced ginger and lemon to taste.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

Steep and finish

  1. Pour the syrup over the cucumbers.

  2. Let the cucumbers sit for two days, covered with a plate and a weight.

  3. Boil the syrup again, adding half as much sugar as before, and the juice and grated peel of two lemons for every six cucumbers.

  4. Boil the lemon in the syrup for only two minutes.

  5. Strain the syrup over the cucumbers.

  6. Store the cucumbers in small jars tightly sealed.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Cucumber + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together973 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The main ingredient, which softens and turns translucent as it is steeped in sugar syrup.
Loaf sugar
Preserves the cucumbers and gives the syrup its sweetness and body.
Alum
Firms the cucumber flesh so it stays crisp during long soaking.
Egg white
Binds impurities to the syrup so they can be skimmed off, leaving it clear.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the lemon in the syrup for only two minutes. Citrus peel and juice turn bitter and lose fresh aroma with prolonged heating, so a short boil keeps the flavour bright while still warming the syrup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, lemon, sugar, egg, ginger):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, lemon, sugar, egg, ginger. 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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