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Sweet Cucumber Pickles

A sweet pickle made by boiling cucumbers with vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Sweet Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Cut ripe cucumbers in half and scrape out the seeds.

  2. Cut the cucumbers into strips.

  3. Soak them overnight in salt water.

Make the syrup and pickle

  1. Combine 1 quart of vinegar with 1 pound of sugar in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, skimming off any foam.

  3. Add the cucumbers to the boiling mixture and cook until they are tender and transparent, then remove the cucumbers.

  4. Boil the syrup with a small muslin bag of mixed spices for 1.5 hours.

  5. Pour the syrup over the cucumbers.

Store

  1. Cover and store.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the body of the pickle and, once cooked, give it a soft, tender texture.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that preserves the cucumbers and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, by drawing out water, helps the cucumbers turn clear and firm.
Mixed spices
Infuse the syrup with aromatic flavour that carries into the cucumbers.

The step that matters

Cooking the cucumbers until tender and transparent. Hot sugar syrup slowly replaces water inside the cucumber, which makes it translucent. Cooking too briefly leaves it firm and opaque, while overcooking breaks the flesh down into mush.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar. 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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