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Cucumber Catsup

A pickled cucumber condiment with cayenne, vinegar, salt, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare and remove the seeds from the cucumbers, then grate them.

  2. Drain the grated cucumbers in a colander until you have 1 pint of pulp.

Make and bottle the catsup

  1. Transfer the pulp to a pot and add cayenne, cider vinegar, salt, and horseradish, then mix well.

  2. Bottle and seal.

Serve

  1. Serve with cold meats, especially nice with cold corned beef.

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. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the bulk and fresh, watery body of the catsup once drained into pulp.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the catsup.
Horseradish
Contributes a pungent, sharp aroma and heat that defines the catsup's bite.

The step that matters

Draining the grated cucumbers. Grated cucumber holds a lot of free water. Draining it until you reach the stated pulp volume keeps the catsup thick rather than thin and watery, and stops the flavours from being diluted.

Swap the horseradish

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, cider, 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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