In 2009 the European Union repealed the regulation governing how much a cucumber is permitted to bend. Somebody had to keep going. It was, regrettably, us.
No cucumbers were rejected in the making of this website. Several were eaten.
Updated continuously from a network of sources we would rather not name, using a methodology we would rather not publish. Hover any figure for a methodology we have published anyway.
A weighted basket of audible crunches, sampled from kitchens that did not consent.
The world average is holding just inside Class I. We take no credit. We take some credit.
Measured at the jar. Anything above 3.0 and we advise standing back and calling someone.
It has never moved. It will never move. It is the only thing in this world you can rely on.
This is the part people assume we invented. We did not.
For twenty-one years, European Commission Regulation no. 1677/88 laid down quality standards for cucumbers. It really did specify how bendy a cucumber was allowed to be before it could be sold as top grade. It was repealed in July 2009 on the grounds that it was, and we quote the general mood of the time, ridiculous.
"A cucumber which bends is not a lesser cucumber. It is simply a cucumber with opinions."
The Office continues to apply the standard on a purely voluntary basis, because a world without cucumber grading is a world in which anything can happen, and we have seen what happens.
Hold your cucumber up to the screen and adjust the instrument until it matches. This is not a joke, it is a methodology. Certificates are issued instantly and are worth exactly what you paid for them.
Move the instrument. The Office will pass judgement, as it always does, without being asked twice.
Registry maintained by Internetivo. Est. 2010.
The Office maintains a chamber for observing the transition. Set the brine, set the time, and watch a perfectly ordinary vegetable commit to something.
A cucumber sits in an empty vessel, entirely unpickled, wondering why it was brought here. Add brine. Add time. Watch a personality form.
The Office does not judge the outcome. The Office simply records it.
Our most rigorous instrument. Click the cucumber as many times as you can in ten seconds. There is no scientific value in this whatsoever, which has never stopped anybody.
Press start. Then attack the vegetable.
The Office has never secured funding to investigate why a cat, on discovering a cucumber behind it, leaves the ground entirely. We have built the apparatus anyway. Deploy a cucumber. Observe. Take no pleasure in it.
It is sitting. It is content. It has no idea that a cucumber exists, let alone that one is about to exist immediately behind it. The Office would like it on record that this was not our idea.
No cats were harmed. Several were profoundly inconvenienced.
Five questions. One ruling. The Office has classified vegetables for over a decade and sees no reason to stop at vegetables.
Our researchers have verified some of the following. The tags are honest, which is more than can be said for most research. Turn a card over for the Office position.
People arrive here from a search engine wanting to know whether the cucumber law was real. It was. Here is the honest version, stated plainly, so that nobody has to take a satirical website's word for it.
Yes. Commission Regulation (EEC) No 1677/88, adopted on 15 June 1988, laid down quality standards for cucumbers sold in the European Community. To be graded Class Extra or Class I, a cucumber had to be "practically straight", defined as a maximum bend of 10mm per 10cm of length. Class II cucumbers were permitted to bend up to 20mm per 10cm. It is frequently repeated as a myth. It was not a myth.
The curvature rule died on 1 July 2009, when Commission Regulation (EC) No 1221/2008 removed the specific marketing standards for cucumbers and 25 other fruit and vegetable products. Since that date a bent cucumber has been legal to sell at any grade, anywhere in the Union, and nobody has been able to stop it.
Measure its length, lay it flat, and measure the height of the arc at its highest point. Divide, and scale to a 10cm section. Ten millimetres or less is Class I. Up to twenty is Class II. Anything beyond that could not have been sold as top grade before 2009. Or simply use the free straightness instrument on this page, which does the arithmetic and issues you a certificate you can download and keep.
Botanically it is a fruit, specifically a berry of the type known as a pepo, in the same family as melons and squash. Culinarily it is a vegetable. It is also approximately 96 percent water, which remains the single most alarming fact in this entire office.
There is no accepted scientific explanation, and the Office would ask you to be sceptical of anyone who offers one confidently. The prevailing view among animal behaviourists is that the cat is not frightened of the cucumber at all, but of the sudden appearance of an unexpected object immediately behind it while it is eating, which triggers a startle reflex. We have built a simulator of the phenomenon rather than an explanation of it, which we accept is the wrong way round.
Aggouraki was designed, built and is hosted by Internetivo, a web company established in 2010 that builds websites, client portals, hosting and custom software for businesses. Aggouraki is not a client project and nobody paid for it. It exists because the regulation was funny, the afternoon was free, and the argument that a company should be judged by what it builds when nobody is paying it seemed worth making. That work, the paid kind, is secure, rather more exciting, and lives at internetivo.com.
Regulation no. 1677/88 was real, its curvature rule was real, and its repeal in 2009 was real. Everything after that is us.
Nobody. The Office is funded out of pocket by Internetivo, a web company that spent a perfectly good afternoon building this instead of doing billable work. They have been asked to explain themselves and have declined.
You may appeal in writing. The appeal will be read aloud, considered carefully, and then eaten with salt and a little olive oil. The original ruling stands.
Yes. Awkwardly, that is the day job. The same people who built this build websites, client portals and actual working software for businesses that would rather hire professionals than find out the hard way. That work happens at internetivo.com, where the work is secure, the ideas are exciting, and the invoices are real.
In a room with good natural light and a fridge that is almost entirely full. We would rather not be more specific. People turn up with cucumbers.
The Office does not comment on classified material. The Office would, however, gently observe that a certain seven-letter word describing a preserved cucumber can be typed anywhere on this page, and that nothing at all will happen if you do.
A duty officer is on the line at all hours. Ask anything. The Office is contractually unable to say "I don't know" and will therefore answer regardless.
An institution, a live index, a certification instrument, a pickling chamber, a manned hotline, a registry, and an apparatus for frightening a cat, all for a vegetable that is not even a vegetable. Now imagine what happens when somebody hands us a brief that actually matters.
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