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Cucumber Catsup

A pickled cucumber relish made with cucumbers, onions, salt, mustard seed, black pepper, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 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 very finely.

  2. Sprinkle the chopped vegetables with ¾ pint of table salt.

  3. Place the mixture in a sieve and let it drain overnight.

Season and cover

  1. Add 1 teacup of mustard seed and ½ teacup of ground black pepper to the drained mixture. Mix well and cover with good cider vinegar.

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

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 give it a crisp texture once drained.
Onions
Add sharp, savoury flavour and body to the relish.
Table salt
Draws water out of the chopped vegetables so they drain and stay crisp.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, nutty heat and flavour to the relish.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the relish.

The step that matters

Draining overnight after salting. Salt pulls moisture out of the cucumbers and onions. Draining long enough removes that liquid, so the finished relish stays crisp rather than watery and diluted.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, pepper, cider, 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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