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Cucumber Catsup

A pickled cucumber condiment with onions, vinegar, sugar, spices, and turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 ↓

Cucumber Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the cucumbers and sprinkle lightly with coarse sea salt.

  2. Chop the onions finely.

  3. Place the cucumbers in a bag to drip overnight, saving the water.

  4. Measure the cucumber water and use the same amount of good vinegar.

Cook

  1. Add sugar, turmeric, red and black pepper, and white mustard seed to the vinegar.

  2. Bring the vinegar and spices to a boil.

  3. Add the cucumbers and onions.

  4. Cook for about 4 hours, but do not let them become mushy.

Seal

  1. Seal the mixture 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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the relish and release water that is measured for the vinegar.
Onions
Add savory flavor and body as they soften during the long cooking.
Good vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the catsup its tang and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook for about 4 hours without letting the cucumbers turn mushy. Cucumbers are mostly water and their cell walls break down with prolonged heat, so the cooking time must be watched to keep texture while the liquid reduces and flavors blend.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, horseradish, vinegar, sugar, turmeric, pepper, mustard):

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Cauliflowerfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, horseradish, vinegar, sugar, turmeric, pepper, mustard. 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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