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Cucumber Relish

A cucumber relish made with chopped cucumbers, vinegar, red pepper, salt, horseradish, and optional onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the cucumbers, remove the seeds, and chop them.

  2. Put the pulp in a bag, drain, and measure to get 2 cups.

Make the relish

  1. Mix the pulp with 1 cup vinegar, ¼ teaspoon red pepper, ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt, and ½ cup grated horseradish.

  2. Seal the mixture in bottles.

  3. Add 1 onion for improved flavor if desired.

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

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

  2. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, supplying crisp texture and moisture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the relish.
Grated horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the relish.

The step that matters

Draining the cucumber pulp. Cucumbers hold a lot of water. If the pulp is not drained well, the excess liquid dilutes the vinegar and seasonings and can leave the relish watery and less sharp.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, pepper, horseradish):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, pepper, horseradish. 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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