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Salad

Cucumber or Wine Sauce

A cucumber salad with a wine-based sauce made of mustard, mace, pepper, sugar, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 or Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Sprinkle salt over the sliced cucumbers and let them stand for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Press the cucumbers to remove excess water using a coarse linen cloth.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the white mustard seed, mace, black pepper, white sugar, and sweet oil.

  2. Mix the ground mustard with the oil and sugar.

  3. Gradually stir in the Madeira wine.

  4. Add enough cider vinegar to cover the mixture well.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Sliced cucumbers
Form the bulk of the dish; salting draws out water so they stay crisp.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the mixture and gives it a tangy bite.
Madeira wine
Adds a rich, fortified wine flavour and aroma to the sauce.
White mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavour when combined with the other spices.
Sweet oil
Carries the spices and mustard and gives the sauce a smooth, rich texture.

The step that matters

Pressing the salted cucumbers. Salt draws water out of the cucumber slices. If they are not pressed well, the leftover liquid dilutes the sauce and makes the mixture watery.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, pepper, madeira wine, sugar, 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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