Name: Oil Cucumbers
Ingredients: 50 cucumbers; ½ pound white mustard seed; ½ pound white pepper; 1 ounce celery seed; a few blades of mace; 3 or 4 white onions; a few little red peppers; 1 pint best salad oil; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Oil Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the cucumbers thinly and layer them in a jar, sprinkling with ½ cup of coarse sea salt for every peck of cucumbers.
Let the cucumbers sit overnight or for 1-2 days.
Drain off the water and place a thin layer of cucumber slices in a jar.
Add 2 thin slices of onion, a little red pepper, a blade of mace, a sprinkle of mustard seed, white pepper, and celery seed, and 2 tablespoons of oil.
Repeat the layering process until the jar is full, then top with best vinegar.

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.

Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, mustard, celery, mace, onion, pepper):

Tarragonfits better
Thymefits better
Parsleyfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, celery, mace, onion, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.