Name: Pickled Gherkins
Ingredients: 1 gallon water; generous handful of coarse sea salt; 2 quarts cider vinegar; piece of alum the size of a butternut; 2 cups brown sugar; spices (e.g., peppercorns, allspice berries, whole cloves, broken cinnamon sticks, blades of mace); few roots of horseradish

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 ↓

Pickled Gherkins

Ingredients

1 gallon water
generous handful of coarse sea salt
2 quarts cider vinegar
piece of alum the size of a butternut
2 cups brown sugar
spices (e.g., peppercorns, allspice berries, whole cloves, broken cinnamon sticks, blades of mace)
few roots of horseradish

Directions

Inspect cucumbers and discard any without stems.
Wash cucumbers thoroughly to remove black specks.
Make a brine with a generous handful of coarse sea salt in 1 gallon of water.
Heat the brine until boiling, then pour it over the cucumbers, ensuring they are fully covered.
After 24 hours, drain the brine, scald it, and pour it over the cucumbers again.
Repeat this process for the next two days.
On the fifth day, heat 2 quarts of cider vinegar and dissolve a piece of alum in it.
Scald the cucumbers in the hot vinegar without boiling.
Skim out the cucumbers and add more, repeating until all are scalded.
In a cheesecloth bag, tie together spices and add to the vinegar.
Boil the vinegar, sugar, and spices together, then pour over the cucumbers.
Add a few roots of horseradish to the jar with the pickles to help preserve them.

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.

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).
Butternut + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together24 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

Swap the mace

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

Nutmegfits better
Gingerfits better
Cardamomfits better
Macethe original

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