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Sliced Cucumber Relish

A pickled relish made from sliced cucumbers, onions, and red peppers in vinegar with optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,102 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sliced Cucumber Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers and onions.

  2. Sprinkle the sliced vegetables with coarse sea salt and let them stand overnight.

  3. Drain the vegetables.

Pickle and seal

  1. Pour enough vinegar over the vegetables to cover them well.

  2. Scald the vinegar in a pot and add turmeric to the scalding vinegar.

  3. Add the cut red peppers to the pot.

  4. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the cucumbers and onions.

  5. Add sugar if desired.

  6. Seal the jar tightly.

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 + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Turmeric + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Onion + turmerictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,913 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main crisp, bulky body of the relish.
Silver onions
Add savory bulk and a mild sharp flavor to the relish.
Vinegar
Acidifies the vegetables, creating the pickled tang and helping preserve them.
Turmeric
Gives the relish its yellow color and a mild earthy aroma.
Red peppers
Add color, mild sweetness and a little heat to the relish.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the vegetables. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and onions through osmosis. Draining well removes that liquid, so the relish stays crisp and the vinegar is not diluted.

Swap the onion

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

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

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