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Sweet Cucumber Pickles

A sweet pickle made by preserving cucumbers in a vinegar and sugar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain cucumbers thoroughly from their liquid.

Make the pickles

  1. In a five-gallon stone jar, combine vinegar, sugar, and spices.

  2. Add the cucumbers to the jar.

  3. Stir the mixture two or three times a week for two weeks.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

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

  5. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 and crisp bite of the pickles.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickles their tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and deepens flavour.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the brine.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the pickling liquid.
Cloves
Adds strong, warm aroma to the brine.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture two or three times a week for two weeks. Regular stirring keeps the sugar and spices evenly distributed through the brine so the cucumbers pickle uniformly rather than tasting sweet and sour in some areas and bland in others.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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