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Salad

Cucumber Catsup

A pickled cucumber condiment made with vinegar, salt, pepper, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Cucumber Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel the cucumbers and soak them in salt water for a short time.

  2. If large, cut them in half and scrape out the seeds.

  3. Grate the cucumbers on a coarse grater.

  4. For every dozen cucumbers, grate one good-sized onion.

Make the catsup

  1. Pour off the collected water.

  2. Measure the water.

  3. For the amount of water poured off, add an equal amount of cider vinegar.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  5. If the vinegar is too sharp, dilute it with cucumber water.

  6. If the vinegar is too thin, use less vinegar.

  7. Transfer to jars like fruit.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green cucumbers
Form the bulk of the catsup and release water that becomes the liquid base.
Onion
Adds pungent aroma and savory flavor that rounds out the sharp vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the catsup and gives it its tangy bite.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar. The vinegar is matched to the measured cucumber water in equal amount, and its sharpness is adjusted by tasting. Too much acid makes the catsup harsh, and too little leaves it thin and less stable, so the balance has to be checked by taste.

Swap the onion

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

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

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