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Sweet Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using a sweet brine of cider vinegar, salt, water, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Sweet Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Wash the cucumbers.

  2. Place the cucumbers in a jar.

  3. Make a brine with ½ cup coarse sea salt and ½ cup water.

  4. Add ¼ cup good cider vinegar to the brine.

  5. Heat the brine until scalding hot.

  6. Pour the hot brine over the pickles.

  7. Repeat this process every morning for 3 days.

  8. On the fourth day, remove the pickles from the brine.

Pack and seal

  1. Wipe each pickle dry.

  2. Heat ¼ cup cider vinegar until scalding hot.

  3. Add the broken whole spices to the hot vinegar.

  4. Place the pickles in 2 quart cans.

  5. Cover the pickles with the hot vinegar.

  6. Add ¼ cup brown sugar.

  7. Seal the cans.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

  4. Cucumber + cidertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Cucumber + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers
Form the pickles themselves, taking on flavor and crunch during brining.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the brine.
Good cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickles their sharp, tangy flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pour the hot brine over the pickles each morning. Repeated hot brining draws water out and lets salt and flavor penetrate the cucumbers gradually. Brine that is not hot enough, or skipped days, can leave the pickles soft or unevenly seasoned.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, 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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