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Cucumber Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made by pickling cucumbers in vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare and slice the cucumbers, then let them stand in weak vinegar for 24 hours.

Cook

  1. Add brown sugar, cinnamon bark, and whole cloves, and cook until tender.

  2. Make a syrup with vinegar and sugar, then steam the cucumbers before cooking them in the syrup until tender.

Pack and finish

  1. Place the cucumbers in a stone jar and add the spices.

  2. Boil the syrup down if necessary and pour it 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cucumber + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together874 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cucumber + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,319 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Late, ripe cucumbers
Form the main body of the pickle, softening into a tender texture during cooking.
Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and helps thicken the syrup that coats the cucumbers.
Weak vinegar
Adds acidity that softens the cucumbers and gives the pickle its tangy flavor.
Cinnamon bark
Contributes warm, sweet aroma to the syrup and the cucumbers.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup down if necessary. Reducing the syrup concentrates sugar and vinegar so it thickens and coats the cucumbers. Too thin a syrup can leave the pickle watery and less preserved.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, 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.

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