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Cucumber Catsup

A pickled cucumber condiment made with cucumbers, onions, salt, pepper, 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 onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the cucumbers and onions as finely as possible.

  2. Sprinkle the chopped vegetables with ½ pint of coarse sea salt and place in a sieve to drain.

Season and steep

  1. Add 1 cup of ground pepper and mix well.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a jar and cover with vinegar.

  3. After 24 hours, pour off the vinegar and replace it with fresh vinegar.

Bottle

  1. Seal the mixture tightly in quart bottles.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

White cucumbers
Supply the bulk of the catsup and a crisp texture when kept finely chopped and drained.
White onions
Add sharp, savoury aroma and flavour that deepens as the mixture steeps.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the chopped vegetables through osmosis, reducing wateriness and firming the texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the catsup its tang and helps preserve it.
Ground pepper
Contributes pungent, sharp heat that balances the sour vinegar.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables. Salt must pull water out of the chopped cucumbers and onions before they are bottled. If too much liquid remains, the catsup stays thin and watery and can spoil sooner. Draining in a sieve lets this liquid escape.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, 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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