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Cucumber Pickles

A traditional cucumber pickle made with sugar, vinegar, spices, and raisins, packed in jars and sealed.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel cucumbers, remove seeds, and cut into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Boil cucumbers in equal parts vinegar and water with a little salt until clear but not mushy.

  3. Drain the cucumbers.

Make the syrup and pickle

  1. In a pot, combine sugar and vinegar, bring to a boil, then add cucumbers and scald briefly.

  2. Remove cucumbers with a skimmer and let cool.

  3. Pack cucumbers in jars with spices and pour syrup over them.

  4. Seal the jars.

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. 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. Cassia + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  5. Cassia + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp-textured body of the pickle that holds its shape after cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the vinegar, forms the syrup that preserves the cucumbers.
Strong vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the pickles.

The step that matters

Boil cucumbers until clear but not mushy. Cucumbers are mostly water and soften quickly with heat. Stopping when they turn clear, before the pectin-rich cell walls break down, keeps them firm through the later scalding and sealing.

Swap the mace

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

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

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