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 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

Make the vinegar

Place the cucumbers, vinegar, onions, shallots, garlic, salt, pepper, and cayenne in a stone jar.
Let the mixture stand for 4 days.
Afterward, bring the mixture to a boil.

Strain and store

Once cooled, strain and filter the liquid through paper.
Store in small bottles to add to salads or serve 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: Supply the main flavour and aroma that infuse into the vinegar during standing.
Vinegar: Acts as the base liquid and preserving medium that extracts flavour from the vegetables.
Onions: Add savoury sweetness and aroma that mellow into the vinegar over the standing period.
Shallots: Contribute a milder onion-like aroma and depth of flavour to the infusion.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture stand for 4 days. The vinegar must fully cover and steep the vegetables in a sealed stone jar so flavour extracts evenly and the mixture stays acidic enough to keep without spoiling.

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.

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Cucumber Vinegar