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Cucumber Vinegar

A fermented cucumber vinegar made by layering cucumbers with salt, spices, and vinegar, then aging and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and slice fresh cucumbers thinly into a jar, choosing those with few seeds.

  2. Season the cucumber layers with coarse sea salt, curry powder, and plenty of black pepper.

  3. Pour boiling pale vinegar over the cucumbers until fully covered.

Steep and bottle

  1. Seal the jar tightly and let it sit for at least one month, away from air.

  2. After a month, strain the vinegar until clear and transfer it to clean, dry bottles.

  3. Cork the bottles tightly.

Finish

  1. Mix in 1 tablespoon of chili vinegar per pint of common vinegar and optionally add sliced mild onions.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh cucumbers
Release their flavor and aroma into the vinegar as they steep.
Pale vinegar
Acts as the sharp base that extracts and preserves the cucumber flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cucumber layers, concentrating their flavor.
Curry powder
Adds warm, earthy spice aroma that infuses into the vinegar.
Black pepper
Contributes sharp, pungent heat to the infused vinegar.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar and waiting a full month. Keeping the jar sealed away from air lets the vinegar slowly extract flavor from the cucumbers and spices. Opening it early yields a weak, underdeveloped infusion.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, 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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