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Salad

Cucumbers with Mustard

A pickled cucumber and onion salad seasoned with mustard and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumbers with Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice cucumbers or cut them into 1-inch lengths and quarter them.

  2. Slice large onions very thinly.

  3. Layer cucumbers and onions in a dish. Sprinkle salt on each layer.

  4. Cover with another plate. Let drain for 6 hours.

Pickle and bottle

  1. Mix spiced vinegar with 2 teaspoons of mustard for each quart of vinegar, adding mustard to warm vinegar. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the cucumbers and onions.

  2. Leave until the next day. Bottle and cork tightly.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, bulk body of the pickle.
Large onions
Add pungency and sweetness that mellows during pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and onions so they stay crisp in the vinegar.
Spiced vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and flavours the vegetables.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavour to the vinegar brine.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables. Salt draws out water from the cucumbers and onions. If they are not drained well, extra liquid dilutes the vinegar and the pickle turns soft rather than crisp.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, 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.

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