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Cucumber Vinegar

A pickled cucumber vinegar made by steeping cucumbers, onions, shallots, and spices in cold vinegar for a week.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 264 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cucumber Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the sliced cucumbers in a jar.

  2. Pour the cold vinegar over the cucumbers.

  3. Add the sliced onions, shallots, black pepper, cayenne, and salt.

Steep and bottle

  1. Let the mixture stand for one week.

  2. After a week, boil the mixture and allow it to cool.

  3. Strain through flannel and bottle the vinegar.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main vegetable flavor and fresh, crisp character to the infused vinegar.
Vinegar
Acts as the liquid base and preserving medium that extracts flavor from the vegetables and aromatics.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma that mellow as the mixture steeps.
Shallots
Contribute a mild, delicate onion flavor with aromatic depth.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture after a week. Boiling after steeping helps stabilize the vinegar so it keeps well when bottled, and cooling before straining lets the solids settle for a clearer result.

Swap the onion

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

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

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