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Salad

Cold Cucumber Catsup

A chilled cucumber condiment made with cucumbers, onions, horseradish, salt, peppers, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Cold Cucumber Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and remove seeds from cucumbers, then chop them finely.

  2. Chop the onions finely.

  3. Squeeze and dry the cucumber pulp.

Combine and bottle

  1. Add grated horseradish and coarse sea salt to the cucumber pulp.

  2. Chop the peppers finely and add them to the mixture.

  3. Cover the mixture with vinegar and bottle it without cooking.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, providing crisp, watery texture once squeezed.
Onions
Add sharp, pungent flavor that mellows the raw vegetables.
Large peppers
Contribute fresh, slightly sweet bite and color to the mixture.
Vinegar
Acts as the preservative and provides the sharp acidity that keeps the uncooked relish stable.

The step that matters

Squeeze and dry the cucumber pulp. Cucumbers hold a lot of water. If the pulp is not well squeezed and dried, excess liquid dilutes the vinegar and makes the uncooked catsup watery and less stable in the bottle.

Swap the onion

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

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

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