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Ripe Cucumber Pickles

A pickle made from large yellow cucumbers, sweetened with sugar and spiced with cinnamon, cloves, allspice, black pepper, mace or nutmeg, and raisins or grapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Ripe Cucumber Pickles

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 ↓

Ripe Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare the cucumbers and remove the cores.

  2. Soak the cucumbers in salt water for 2 days.

  3. Remove the cucumbers from the brine and pour boiling water over them.

  4. Let the cucumbers stand overnight.

  5. Pour off the water and prepare the pickle mixture.

Make and add the pickle mixture

  1. For each quart of vinegar, mix with ½ cup hot water, 2 cups sugar, and the spices.

  2. Scald the mixture and boil until the cucumbers are easily penetrated with a fork.

  3. Use as little vinegar as possible for boiling, then pour the remaining vinegar 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Large yellow cucumbers
Form the pickle itself, becoming tender and firm as they cure and cook.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the brine soak.
Sharp vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that preserves and flavours the pickles.
2 cups sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture until the cucumbers are penetrated. Cooking the cucumbers until a fork pierces them easily softens their structure so they absorb the spiced vinegar. Stopping too early leaves them crisp and under-flavoured, while overcooking makes them mushy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, pepper. 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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