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Sweet Cucumber Pickles

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Sweet Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Cut cucumbers lengthwise and remove seeds.

  2. Soak cucumbers in salt water for 24 hours.

  3. Soak cucumbers in a mixture of vinegar and water for another 24 hours.

  4. Drain the cucumbers.

Make the syrup and pickle

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and ginger to make a syrup.

  2. Seal the cucumbers in the syrup.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the main bulk of the pickle and carry its crisp, mild texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the acidity with sweetness and helps define the syrup's character.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers during the brine soak, firming their texture.

The step that matters

Soaking in salt water. Salt draws moisture out of the cucumbers through osmosis, which firms the flesh and helps it stay crisp. Soaking for the full 24 hours gives the salt time to work through the cucumbers evenly before the vinegar stage.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

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