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Cucumber Pickles

A preserved cucumber dish made with brine, vinegar, spices, and grape leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice 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 ↓

Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Make a strong brine with water and salt and heat it.

  2. Pour the brine over the cucumbers to cover them well.

  3. Let small cucumbers stand for 1 day and night.

  4. Let large cucumbers sit until they taste salty when cut open.

  5. Remove cucumbers from the brine and wash them in clear water, then drain.

Make the pickle

  1. Place the cucumbers in a preserving kettle and cover them with cider vinegar.

  2. Add alum, sugar, mustard seed, cinnamon, allspice, mace, cloves, celery seed, and red peppers to the vinegar.

  3. Cover the mixture with a thick layer of grape leaves.

  4. Heat gradually for 3 to 4 hours without boiling.

  5. Remove the grape leaves.

Jar and seal

  1. Pack the pickles into jars while hot and cover them with vinegar.

  2. Cover the jars with a plate until cool.

  3. Seal the jars tightly with thick paper.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Main vegetable that is brined until salty, then pickled in the spiced vinegar.
Sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the brine.
Cider vinegar
Acid that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Alum
Helps the cucumbers stay firm and crisp during long gentle heating.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that carries through the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Heat gradually without boiling. Boiling softens cucumbers and can make them mushy. Slow, steady heat below a boil lets the vinegar and spices penetrate while the cucumbers keep their texture.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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