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Cucumber Vinegar

A pickled cucumber condiment made with vinegar, onions, garlic, and spices.

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. Slice the cucumbers and onions.

  2. Combine them with the other ingredients in a stone jar.

  3. Let it stand for four days.

Boil and strain

  1. Boil the mixture, then let it cool.

  2. Strain and filter the liquid through fine muslin or flannel.

  3. Cork the jar to store.

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 body of the pickle, releasing flavor and crisp texture into the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid, giving the sharp acidity that keeps the mixture stable.
Onions
Add pungency and sweetness that mellow as the mixture stands and cooks.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the cucumbers and seasons the liquid.

The step that matters

Let it stand for four days. The vinegar needs time to soak into the sliced vegetables and draw out their flavor. Stopping early leaves the pickle sharp and under-seasoned, and the mixture must be fully cooled and sealed before storage.

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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