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Ripe Cucumber Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made from ripe cucumbers, vinegar, sugar, and cassia buds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Ripe Cucumber Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and seed the ripe cucumbers.

  2. Cut each cucumber into two parts crosswise, then slice each half into four pieces.

  3. Let the cucumber pieces stand for 24 hours covered with cold vinegar.

  4. Drain the cucumbers and place them in fresh vinegar.

Make the syrup and pack

  1. In a pot, combine 2 pounds of sugar, 1 ounce of cassia buds, and 1 quart of vinegar.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes or until clear and tender.

  3. Can the pickles closely in a jar.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Cucumber + cassiatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Vinegar + cassiatop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Sugar + cassiatop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body of the pickle, which softens and becomes tender as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, dissolved into the vinegar, helps build a thick preserving syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that flavours the pickle and helps preserve it.
Cassia buds
Add a warm, spicy aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 30 minutes or until clear and tender. Boiling drives off water and lets sugar concentrate the syrup, while the cucumbers soften and turn translucent. Stopping too early leaves them firm and watery, and boiling too long can make them mushy.

Swap the cassia

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Cassiathe original

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