Name: Cucumber Vinegar
Ingredients: 15 large cucumbers, peeled and sliced; 3 pints vinegar; 4 large onions, sliced; 2-3 shallots; a little garlic; 2 tablespoons coarse sea salt; 3 teaspoons pepper; ½ teaspoon cayenne

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

Place cucumbers in a stone jar.
Add vinegar, onions, shallots, garlic, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

Steep and boil

Let the mixture stand for 4 days.
Boil the mixture, then let it cool.

Strain and store

Strain and filter the liquid through paper.
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.

Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Cucumber + shallottop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together264 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,556 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,000 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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 vegetable flavor and body that the vinegar infuses over the standing period.
Vinegar: Acts as the liquid base that extracts flavor from the vegetables and preserves the mixture.
Onions: Contribute savory, aromatic sweetness that mellows and blends into the vinegar during standing.
Shallots: Add a milder onion aroma and depth of flavor to the infused vinegar.

Swap the onion

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

Chivefits better
Kalefits better
Mustardfits better
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.