Name: Ripe Cucumber Pickles
Ingredients: large ripe cucumbers; weak salt water; weak vinegar; strong vinegar; sugar; allspice; cloves; cinnamon

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 ↓

Ripe Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Pare the cucumbers and remove the seeds.
Soak the cucumbers overnight in weak salt water.
Boil the cucumbers in weak vinegar for a few minutes.
Let the cucumbers sit in the vinegar for 24 hours.
Pour off the vinegar and prepare a mixture of strong vinegar and sugar.
Add allspice, cloves, and cinnamon to the vinegar mixture and bring to a boil.
Pour the hot syrup over the cucumbers.
Scald the syrup as needed, especially if made late in the season.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cucumber + allspicetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together501 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
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 (vinegar, sugar, allspice, clove, cinnamon):

Mustardfits better
Horseradishfits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Cucumberthe original

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