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Salad

Cucumber Catsup

A pickled cucumber relish made with cucumbers, onions, vinegar, salt, and red pepper pods.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Grate the cucumbers and chop the onions finely.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain through a sieve until dry.

Season and store

  1. Mix with the apple cider vinegar and add 6 small red pepper pods, finely chopped.

  2. Store without sealing.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  2. Onion + apple cider vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Cucumber + apple cider vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 catsup and supply its moisture and fresh flavour.
Onions
Add sharp, savoury aroma and bite to the catsup.
Apple cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the catsup its tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Drain the salted vegetables until dry. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and onions over the 24 hours. If they are not drained well, the excess liquid thins the catsup and dilutes its flavour.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, apple cider vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Cabbagefits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, apple cider vinegar. 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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