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Cucumber Vinegar

A preserved cucumber condiment made by soaking sliced cucumbers in vinegar with garlic, shallots, pepper, and salt.

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. Pare and slice the cucumbers thinly.

  2. Pour the vinegar over the cucumbers.

  3. Add the garlic, shallots, ground white pepper, and salt.

Steep and bottle

  1. Let it stand for 10-12 days.

  2. Strain the mixture and bottle it.

  3. Add a few whole peppercorns to each bottle and cork 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. Cucumber + shallottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together264 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 and fresh, crisp flavour that the vinegar takes up.
Vinegar
Extracts cucumber flavour over days and acts as the preserving liquid.
Shallots
Add mild onion-like savoury aroma to the infused vinegar.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows as it steeps in the vinegar.

The step that matters

Let it stand for 10-12 days. Flavour moves from the cucumbers into the vinegar slowly, so cutting the standing time short leaves a weak, thin-tasting result. Keeping the jar covered and sealed during steeping limits contamination.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, clove, garlic, 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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