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Cucumber Catsup

A pickled cucumber and onion condiment seasoned with 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.

  3. Add 1 teacup of ground pepper to the drained mixture and mix well.

Pickle and bottle

  1. Transfer the mixture to a jar and cover it with vinegar.

  2. Let it stand for 24 hours.

  3. Pour off the vinegar, add more vinegar, and seal the mixture 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
Provide the bulk of the relish and a crisp texture once chopped finely.
White onions
Add pungency and aroma that mellow during the long vinegar soak.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the chopped vegetables, concentrating flavour and firming the texture.
Ground pepper
Adds sharp, warm heat that seasons the mixture throughout.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the mixture and gives it its tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Draining after salting. Salt pulls moisture out of the chopped vegetables; draining off that liquid before pickling keeps the catsup from becoming watery and helps it keep well in the bottles.

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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