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Ripe Cucumber Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using vinegar, sugar, onions, spices, and optional horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Ripe Cucumber Pickles

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 ↓

Ripe Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Divide cucumbers into smaller pieces and remove the seeds.

  2. Cook the pieces in water with just enough salt to flavor them, then drain.

  3. Place the cucumber pieces in a stone jar.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, sliced onions, cayenne pepper, whole cloves, cinnamon, and allspice in a bag.

  2. Boil the mixture, then remove the bag to prevent discoloration.

Pour and store

  1. Pour the prepared vinegar over the cucumber slices in the jar.

  2. Set the jar in a cool place and add horseradish pieces to prevent mold.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the main body of the pickle, becoming crisp-tender after salting and cooking.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and helps round out the flavour.
Onions
Add savoury flavour and aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Removing the spice bag after boiling. Leaving whole spices in the hot liquid for too long can darken the liquid and discolour the cucumbers, so the bag should be taken out once the mixture has boiled.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar, pepper, clove, 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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