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Cucumber Sauce

A pickled cucumber sauce made with cucumbers, onions, salt, vinegar, pepper, mustard seed, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cucumbers and onions.

  2. Place them in a bag with the salt to drain for 6 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. After draining, add the black pepper, mustard seed, and cloves.

  2. Pour in the cold cider 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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 crisp texture of the sauce.
White onions
Add savory sharpness and aroma that balance the vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and onions, firming them during draining.
Cider vinegar
Supplies acidity that preserves the sauce and gives it its tang.
Black pepper
Adds pungent heat and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Draining the cucumbers and onions with salt. Salt draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis. If they are not drained long enough, the sauce stays watery and dilutes its flavor and tang.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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