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Cucumber Ketchup: the Suffolk Receipt

A preserved cucumber condiment made with onions, salt, wine, anchovies, horseradish, spices, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Ketchup: the Suffolk Receipt

Ingredients

Directions

Draw the liquid

  1. Slice cucumbers and onions into an earthen pan and sprinkle with salt.

  2. Let them sit until the liquid begins to run.

  3. Break the mixture into small pieces and let it stand for another day and night.

  4. Strain off the liquid.

Season and boil

  1. For every quart of liquid, add the same quantity of white wine, anchovies, and horseradish.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes, then strain it again.

  3. For every quart, add white pepper, mace, and nutmeg, all pounded, then boil again.

Bottle

  1. When cold, bottle the ketchup with the spices and add a piece of ginger to each bottle.

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 + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together389 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Make up the bulk of the ketchup and supply its watery base.
Onions
Add savory flavor and body to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor of the sauce.
Anchovies
Add salty, savory depth to the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent bite.

The step that matters

Salting and standing the cucumbers and onions. Salt draws water out of the vegetables by osmosis, and that liquid becomes the base of the ketchup. Too little salt or too short a rest leaves little liquid to strain off, so the sauce comes out thin and weakly flavored.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, white wine, horseradish, mace, nutmeg, ginger):

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, white wine, horseradish, mace, nutmeg, ginger. 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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