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Fresh Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using brine, vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, cloves, cinnamon, alum, and celery seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Fresh Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Prepare a brine that will float an egg.

  2. Heat the brine until boiling.

  3. Pour the boiling brine over the cucumbers.

  4. Let the cucumbers stand for 24 hours.

  5. Wipe the cucumbers dry.

Vinegar and spice soak

  1. Heat vinegar until boiling.

  2. Pour the boiling vinegar over the cucumbers.

  3. Let the cucumbers stand for another 24 hours.

Make the spiced syrup and finish

  1. Replace the vinegar with fresh vinegar, adding brown sugar, mustard seed, cloves, cinnamon sticks, alum, and celery seed.

  2. Heat the mixture until boiling.

  3. 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

Medium small cucumbers
Form the pickle itself, becoming crisp and firm as they absorb the brine and vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavour and aroma to the pickling liquid.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during the long soaking process.

The step that matters

Wiping the cucumbers dry before the vinegar soak. Surface water left on the cucumbers dilutes the fresh vinegar and weakens its acidity, so drying them first helps the vinegar preserve the pickles properly.

Swap the celery

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

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

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