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Cucumber Relish

A pickled relish of cucumbers, onion, mango, horseradish, mustard seed, turmeric, brown sugar, cloves, and sea salt.

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 Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and drain

  1. Cover cucumbers, onion, and mango with salt water and let sit for 3 hours.

  2. Drain the vegetables.

Cook and seal

  1. In a pot, combine all ingredients and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Can and seal the relish.

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. Mustard + turmerictop 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
Make up the bulk of the relish and provide a crisp, fresh texture.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sugar and gives the relish its tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour that offsets the vinegar.
Mango
Contributes fruity sweetness and softens into the relish as it cooks.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent bite that develops as the seeds cook in the liquid.
Turmeric
Gives the relish its yellow colour and a mild, earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Drain the vegetables. Salted vegetables hold a lot of liquid. If they are not drained well, the excess brine and water dilute the vinegar and sugar syrup, leaving the relish thin and overly salty.

Swap the mango

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, onion, horseradish, mustard, turmeric, 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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