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Cucumber Vinegar

A vinegar-based condiment made with cucumbers, onions, shallots, garlic, salt, pepper, and cayenne, left to steep then boiled.

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. Pare and slice the cucumbers and place them in a stone jar.

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

Steep and finish

  1. Let the mixture stand for 4 days.

  2. After 4 days, bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Once cooled, strain and filter the liquid through paper.

  4. Store in small bottles to 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 vegetable body and fresh, crisp flavor for the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid and supplies the sharp, acidic flavor.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aromatic flavor that infuses into the vinegar.
Salt
Seasons the liquid and helps draw flavor out of the vegetables.

The step that matters

Bringing the mixture to a boil after standing. Boiling after the four-day steep helps set the flavors and pasteurize the vinegar before bottling. Cooling before straining keeps the liquid clear and easier to filter.

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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