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Sweet Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using white wine vinegar, brown sugar, cayenne pepper, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the cucumbers and cut them into eight pieces.

  2. Salt the cucumbers well and let them sit overnight.

  3. The next morning, wipe each cucumber dry to remove the salt.

Pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar, brown sugar, cayenne pepper, and allspice together.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles in a crock.

  3. Allow the pickles to stand for a few days before eating.

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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cucumber + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together501 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp pickled body that the sweet brine is absorbed into.
White wine vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the pickles and balances the sweetness.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor that offsets the vinegar's sharpness.

The step that matters

Wiping the cucumbers dry after salting. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers. If too much salt clings to them, the brine will taste overly salty, so each piece should be wiped thoroughly before pouring on the hot mixture.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, vinegar, sugar, pepper, allspice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, sugar, pepper, allspice. 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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