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Ripe Cucumber Catsup

A pickled cucumber condiment made with onions, peppers, salt, vinegar, and horseradish.

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 ↓

Ripe Cucumber Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the cucumbers, remove the seeds, and chop them finely with the onions and peppers.

  2. Sprinkle the salt over the mixture and let it drain in a colander overnight.

Bottle

  1. Add the vinegar to the drained mixture and bottle it.

  2. Place 2-3 pieces of horseradish in the mouth of each bottle.

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. Onion + horseradishtop 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
Provide the bulk of the ketchup and release much of their water during draining.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the chopped vegetables, concentrating their flavor and firming their texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the ketchup and gives it its sharp, tangy character.
Onions
Add pungent savory flavor that deepens the ketchup's base.

The step that matters

Draining overnight in a colander. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and onions through osmosis. Draining long enough removes excess liquid so the ketchup stays thick and does not dilute once the vinegar is added.

Swap the onion

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

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

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