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Cucumber Relish

A cucumber relish made with cucumbers, onions, salt, peppers, mustard seed, celery seed, sugar, horseradish, and white wine vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Pare and seed the cucumbers, then chop them.

  2. Mix the chopped cucumbers with the chopped onions and salt.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Make the relish

  1. Add the chopped red peppers, mustard seed, celery seed, sugar, and grated horseradish to the cucumber mixture.

  2. Boil the white wine vinegar and let it cool.

  3. Mix everything together.

  4. Seal 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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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 relish and supply its crisp texture once salted and drained.
White onions
Add sharp, savory flavour that mellows during the overnight standing.
White wine vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the relish and gives it a tangy bite.
Grated horseradish
Adds pungent heat that fades somewhat as the relish stands.
Red peppers
Contribute sweetness, colour and a mild crunch to the mixture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand overnight. Salting the cucumbers and onions draws out water through osmosis. Standing overnight lets enough moisture leave so the relish stays crisp rather than watery once vinegar and sugar are added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, mustard, celery, sugar, horseradish, white wine):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, mustard, celery, sugar, horseradish, white wine. 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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