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Cucumber Sauce

A pickled cucumber and onion sauce flavored with vinegar, cayenne pepper, mustard, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice cucumbers into thick slices without peeling.

  2. Slice onions into thick slices.

  3. Layer cucumbers and onions alternately in a bowl, sprinkling each layer with salt.

  4. Let stand overnight and drain off the liquid in the morning.

Make the sauce

  1. Bring vinegar to a boil, then add cayenne pepper, prepared mustard, and sugar to taste.

  2. Add cucumbers and onions to the vinegar and let stand until tender.

Pack and seal

  1. Pack into Mason jars and seal.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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 sauce and soften into a tender, pickled texture.
Onions
Add savory flavour and body that softens as the sauce stands.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the sauce.
Prepared mustard
Adds pungent flavour and depth to the vinegar base.

The step that matters

Draining after salting overnight. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and onions. Draining off that liquid before adding vinegar keeps the sauce from being diluted and helps the vegetables stay crisp-tender rather than watery.

Swap the onion

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

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

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