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Drink

Cucumber Ketchup

A pickled cucumber condiment made by salting, brining, and simmering cucumbers with peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Cucumber Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare the cucumbers and slice them thinly into a basin.

  2. Sprinkle the cucumbers liberally with coarse sea salt and cover them tightly.

  3. Let them sit overnight.

Make the ketchup

  1. Strain the liquid from the cucumbers into a saucepan.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of peppercorns for each pint of liquid.

  3. Simmer gently for about 1 hour.

Bottle and store

  1. When cold, strain into bottles, cork tightly, and store in a cool, dry place.

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body and liquid that becomes the ketchup once drawn out with salt.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the sliced cucumbers, concentrating their flavour and firming their texture.
Peppercorns
Simmered in the liquid to add a warm, pungent spice aroma.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Simmering gently rather than boiling keeps the liquid from reducing too fast or turning bitter, and it lets the peppercorns release their flavour slowly and evenly.

“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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