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Salad

Cucumber Catsup

A fermented cucumber and onion sauce seasoned with vinegar, horseradish, anchovies, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the vegetables

  1. Slice cucumbers and onions into an earthenware pan.

  2. Add salt and let them stand until liquid begins to form.

  3. Break them up small and let them stand for another 24 hours.

Strain and season

  1. Strain off the liquid.

  2. For each quart of liquid, add the same quantity of vinegar, 1 tablespoon of anchovies, and a stick of horseradish.

  3. Boil together for 30 minutes, then strain again.

  4. To each quart, add 1 ounce of white pepper, mace, and nutmeg, mixed and pounded.

  5. Boil well once more, let it cool, then bottle, adding a small piece of ginger to each bottle.

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 + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  2. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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 sauce, giving it its fresh, watery body once the liquid is drawn out.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body to the sauce as they soften in the salted liquid.
Cider vinegar or white wine vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the ketchup and gives it its sharp, tangy flavour.
Horseradish
Adds a pungent heat that sharpens the flavour and rounds out the spices.

The step that matters

Salting and standing the vegetables. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and onions by osmosis. Letting them stand for a full day lets enough liquid drain off, so the finished ketchup is thick rather than watery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cider, pepper, horseradish):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cauliflowerfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cider, pepper, horseradish. 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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