Name: Raisin Pickles
Ingredients: 2 pounds raisins; 2 teaspoons white mustard; 3 dozen cucumbers, sliced; 2 teaspoons celery; 1 piece stick cinnamon; 1 teaspoon black pepper; 3 teaspoons mace; 3 coffee cups brown sugar; 1 quart vinegar

Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Raisin Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

Combine vinegar, spices, and brown sugar in a pot and bring to a boil.
Add raisins and boil until clear.

Combine and serve

If using fresh cucumbers, soak them in salt water overnight.
If using pickled cucumbers, chop and add them.
In a large vessel, mix the boiled mixture with the sliced cucumbers.

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.

Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Mustard + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,581 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins: Add chewy texture and natural sweetness to the pickle.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and a molasses flavour that balances the vinegar's sharpness.
Vinegar: Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Cucumbers: Form the crisp, bulky body of the pickle.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, mustard, cucumber, celery, cinnamon, pepper, coffee):

Allspicefits better
Clovefits better
Nutmegfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, mustard, cucumber, celery, cinnamon, pepper, coffee. 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.