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Cucumber Pickles

A brined cucumber pickle made with brown sugar, mustard seed, cloves, cinnamon, alum, celery seed, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Select medium-sized cucumbers.

  2. Prepare a brine that can float an egg.

  3. Heat the brine until boiling.

  4. Pour the boiling brine over the cucumbers.

  5. Let the cucumbers stand for 24 hours.

  6. Wipe them dry.

Vinegar and spice

  1. Heat cider vinegar until boiling.

  2. Pour the boiling cider vinegar over the cucumbers.

  3. Let the cucumbers stand for another 24 hours.

  4. Change the vinegar to fresh.

  5. Add brown sugar, mustard seed, cloves, cinnamon sticks, alum, and celery seed to the fresh vinegar.

  6. Heat the mixture until boiling.

  7. Pour the boiling mixture over the 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.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

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

  5. 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

Cucumbers
The main vegetable that is preserved and becomes the pickle itself.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling brine and vinegar over the cucumbers. The liquid must be fully boiling when poured so the cucumbers are heated through and the pickling liquid stays hot enough to work. Lukewarm liquid can leave the cucumbers poorly preserved and prone to spoilage.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, egg, sugar, mustard, clove, cinnamon, cider. 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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