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Sauce

Cucumber Catsup

A pickled cucumber sauce seasoned with salt, pepper, mustard seed, allspice, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cucumber Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel and chop the cucumbers.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and let sit for 12 hours.

  3. Drain the cucumbers and rinse.

Cook and bottle

  1. Combine cucumbers with vinegar, black pepper, mustard seed, allspice, and cloves.

  2. Cook the mixture for 30 minutes over low heat.

  3. Bottle the catsup while hot.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 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. 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
Provide the main bulk and fresh vegetable body of the ketchup.
Salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, concentrating flavor and helping them keep their texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent aroma and flavor to the spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Drain and rinse after salting. Salting pulls out a lot of liquid. Draining and rinsing removes excess salt and surface water, so the final ketchup is not overly salty or watery and thickens properly during cooking.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Radishfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, mustard, allspice, clove. 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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