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Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using cider vinegar, sugar, celery seed, cinnamon, peppers, mustard seed, and cloves.

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 ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gherkins in strong salt water (enough to float an egg) overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the salt water and wipe the gherkins dry.

Cook and jar

  1. Place the gherkins in a kettle and add the vinegar and spices.

  2. Bring to a boil, then transfer to glass jars, adding some spices to each jar.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cider vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that preserves the gherkins and gives the pickles their tang.
Gherkins
Small cucumbers that form the main body of the pickles and keep a firm crunch.
White sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that comes through in the finished pickles.

The step that matters

Soaking the gherkins in salt water overnight. The brine draws water out of the cucumbers and firms their flesh, so they stay crisp rather than going soft once the hot vinegar is added. Skipping or shortening the soak can leave the pickles limp.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, pepper, mustard, clove):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, pepper, mustard, clove. 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.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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