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Mary's Sweet Pickled Cucumber

A sweet pickle made by boiling sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and vinegar, then pickling sliced cucumbers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Mary's Sweet Pickled Cucumber

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickle

  1. Boil sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and vinegar together, skimming off any scum.

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Scrape out the pulp from the cucumbers and cut them into strips one inch thick.

  2. Soak the cucumber strips in cold water for five minutes.

Cook and store

  1. Add the cucumbers to the boiling pickle and cook until a quill can easily pass through them.

  2. Pack the cucumbers tightly in a jar and store in a cool place.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together874 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Clove + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,319 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps preserve the cucumbers in the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the pickle.
Cucumbers
Form the main body of the pickle and soften as they cook in the syrup.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickle.
Cloves
Adds strong aromatic spice flavour to the pickle.

The step that matters

Cooking the cucumbers in the boiling pickle. Cucumbers must be cooked until a quill passes through easily so they become tender and absorb the syrup. Undercooked pieces stay firm and crisp, while overcooking can make them collapse and turn mushy.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

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