Name: Stuffed Cucumbers
Ingredients: cucumbers; American mustard seed; cloves; black pepper; red pepper pods; small onions; celery seed; horseradish

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffed Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Soak cucumbers in brine for 4 to 5 days.
Cut open one side and scoop out the inner part.
If the inside is very salty, soak in cold water overnight; otherwise, soak for 2 to 3 hours.
Prepare stuffing by finely chopping mustard seed, cloves, black pepper, red pepper pods, small onions, celery seed, and horseradish.
Stuff the cucumbers with the prepared mixture.

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.

Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together640 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Swap the onion

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

Lettucefits better
Beetrootfits better
Turnipfits better
Onionthe original

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