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Sweet Pickles

A preserved cucumber dish made with vinegar, salt, sugar, alum, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the cucumbers

  1. Soak the sliced cucumbers in a strong salt brine for 2 days.

  2. Rinse the cucumbers in cold water for 1 day.

  3. Drain the cucumbers and place them in a large kettle.

Simmer and pack

  1. Cover with 1 pint vinegar and 2 quarts water.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of alum dissolved in a cup of hot water.

  3. Simmer until the cucumbers turn an amber color, do not boil.

Make the syrup and jar

  1. To make the syrup, boil 5 pounds of sugar, 3 pints of vinegar, and 1.5 ounces of pickling spices for 15 minutes.

  2. Fill jars with the cucumbers and cover with syrup.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cucumber + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
The main vegetable, which softens and takes on the brine, vinegar and syrup flavours.
Sugar
Provides the sweetness and, in the syrup, helps preserve the pickles.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the pickles.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during cooking.
Pickling spices
Give the syrup its aroma and warm spiced flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer until amber, do not boil. Simmering gently lets the cucumbers take on colour and firm up while the alum works. Boiling would soften the cucumber flesh and can make the pickles mushy.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, sugar, syrup. 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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