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Cucumber Relish

A quick cucumber relish made with cucumbers, pepper, salt, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Cucumber Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare and cut the cucumbers in half.

  2. Remove the seeds and grate the cucumbers.

  3. Strain out most of the water.

Season and bottle

  1. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little sugar.

  2. Add vinegar equal to the amount of cucumbers.

  3. Put the mixture in small bottles and seal.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cucumber + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the bulk and fresh, crisp texture of the relish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the relish its tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness to balance the acidity and salt.

The step that matters

Strain out most of the water. Cucumbers are mostly water, and leftover liquid would dilute the vinegar and seasoning and make the relish watery and less stable in storage.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cabbagefits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, 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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