Skip to main content
Drink

Cucumber Catsup

A cucumber-based condiment made by grating cucumbers and onions, then seasoning with salt, pepper, mustard seed, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Peel the cucumbers and onions.

  2. Grate them to a pulp.

  3. Drain the pulp through a sieve for several hours.

Season and bottle

  1. Add salt, red pepper, mustard seed, and vinegar to the pulp.

  2. Seal the mixture in bottles.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Make up most of the bulk, and their water content becomes the thin, sauce-like liquid once drained.
White onions
Add savory bite and aromatic depth that balances the mild cucumber.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the pulp and seasons the catsup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the catsup in bottles.

The step that matters

Draining the pulp through a sieve. Cucumbers hold a lot of water, and grated pulp left wet makes a thin, watery catsup. Draining for several hours lets gravity remove liquid so the sauce thickens to the right consistency.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, mustard, 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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesCucumber PicklesCucumber Pickles25 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipes