Skip to main content
Snack

Cucumber Relish

A pickled cucumber and onion relish seasoned with salt, cider, vinegar, mustard seeds, and optional sugar and bay leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cucumber Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cucumbers lengthwise into ½‑inch thick slices.

  2. Slice the onions thinly.

  3. Pack the cucumbers and onions in layers in a preserving pan with salt and let stand overnight.

  4. In the morning, pour off the liquid.

Cook and pack

  1. Add apple cider and cider vinegar, and cook for 15 minutes.

  2. Optionally, sweeten the vinegar with sugar and add bay leaves while cooking, but remove them before packing.

  3. Pack the mixture in an earthenware jar, sprinkling mustard seeds over each layer.

  4. Pour the juice over the packed relish.

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. Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 relish and provide its crisp, fresh texture.
Onions
Add pungency and sweetness that mellow during cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and onions, firming them and reducing liquid.
Apple cider
Provides liquid and a fruity tang for the cooking syrup.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the relish.

The step that matters

Pouring off the liquid after salting overnight. Salt draws a large volume of water out of the vegetables. Pouring it off fully before cooking keeps the relish from becoming watery and diluting the vinegar brine.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, apple, cider, vinegar, sugar, mustard. 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.

You might also like

FrittersFritters56 recipesCrisp CrackersCrisp Crackers7 recipes