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Cucumber Vinegar

A preserved cucumber vinegar made by steeping cucumbers, onions, shallots, garlic, salt, pepper, and cayenne in vinegar for four days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cucumber Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the cucumbers in a stone jar.

  2. Add vinegar, onions, shallots, garlic, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

Steep and boil

  1. Let the mixture stand for 4 days.

  2. Boil the mixture, then let it cool.

Strain and store

  1. Strain and filter the liquid through paper.

  2. Store in small bottles for use in salads or with meat.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Cucumber + shallottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together264 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body of flavour and bulk for the pickled liquid.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the mixture and gives it its sharp, tangy character.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma that mellow as the mixture stands.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the cucumbers and seasons the liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture, then let it cool. Boiling heats the vinegar mixture enough to help stabilise it for storage, and cooling before straining keeps the liquid clear and safe to handle. Skipping the cooling or rushing the boil can leave the flavour harsh or the keeping quality poor.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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