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Cucumber Sauce

A pickled cucumber sauce made with vinegar, mustard, sugar, alum, salt, pepper, turmeric, cinnamon bark, celery, and cucumbers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,197 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pickles

  1. Make a brine until it has a white froth.

  2. Let pickles stand in this brine for 20 hours.

  3. Remove pickles and soak in cold water for 1 hour.

  4. Prepare equal parts vinegar and water.

  5. Add as many pickles as you can stir with your hands to the mixture and heat until it's warm but bearable to touch.

Pack and cover

  1. In a stone jar, layer pickles and sprinkle with small bits of cinnamon bark and celery until the jar is two-thirds full.

  2. Cover with a thick piece of muslin and place a plate on top as a weight.

  3. Combine vinegar, French mustard, granulated sugar, alum, salt, white pepper, and turmeric in a bowl.

  4. Pour this mixture over the pickles and cover tightly.

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. Turmeric + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Turmeric + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the pickles themselves, providing the crisp, firm texture that the brine and vinegar then preserve.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the pickles.
Granulated sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
French mustard
Adds pungent flavour and body to the sauce.
Alum
Helps the pickles stay firm and crisp during long soaking.

The step that matters

Heating the pickles in the vinegar and water mixture. Heating only until warm, not boiling, keeps the cucumbers firm. Overheating softens the cell walls, so the pickles turn limp and mushy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mustard, sugar, egg, turmeric, cucumber, cinnamon. 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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