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Cucumbers, or Girkins

A method of preserving cucumbers by soaking, boiling, and repeatedly simmering them in a syrup solution.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and ginger work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 973 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumbers, or Girkins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Select good green cucumbers, free from spots.

  2. Soak cucumbers in a saltwater solution for 3 days.

  3. Drain and scald them in fresh water, then let them sit overnight.

  4. Drain again, then boil cucumbers in a mixture of 2 quarts of water and ½ pint of syrup for 5 minutes.

  5. Let them sit until the next day, then drain the syrup.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. In a clean pan, boil the syrup to the right thickness, add cucumbers, and simmer for 15 minutes.

  2. Transfer cucumbers to a flat pan, cover, and let sit for 2 days.

  3. Drain the syrup, boil it for 2-3 minutes, and pour it over the cucumbers.

Finish and pack

  1. Repeat this process for 5-6 days, then pack cucumbers in pots and cover with a bladder.

  2. Optionally, add pieces of ginger to each pot.

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 + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together973 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Syrup + gingertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cucumber + syruptop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together90 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 firms and softens through repeated soaking and syruping.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers during the saltwater soak, helping them firm and preserve.
Syrup
Supplies sweetness and, when reboiled, concentrates into the coating that preserves the cucumbers.

The step that matters

Repeated syrup boiling over several days. Each reboil and rest changes the syrup's concentration and the cucumbers' texture. Drained syrup must be brought to the right thickness, or the pickle may stay soft or fail to keep.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, syrup):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Peppermintfits about as well
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Dillfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, 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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