Name: Cucumber Vinegar
Ingredients: 15 large cucumbers, peeled and sliced; 3 pints vinegar; 4 large onions, sliced; 2 or 3 shallots; a little garlic; 2 tablespoons salt; 3 teaspoons pepper; ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

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

Place the sliced cucumbers in a stone jar.
Add vinegar, sliced onions, shallots, garlic, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

Steep and strain

Let the mixture stand for 4 days.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
Strain the liquid.
Filter the liquid through paper.

Bottle

Store in small bottles for 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.

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: Provide the bulk of the flavoured liquid as they steep and release their moisture into the vinegar.
Vinegar: Acts as the preserving liquid, extracting flavour from the vegetables and onions over the standing period.
Onions: Add savoury depth and pungency that mellows into the steeped liquid.

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.