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Cucumber and Cantaloupe Salad

"Sweet, crunchy, delicious! This salad is easy to make and easy to eat. It's great as a snack or side-dish."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 641 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

4 servings
Prep15 min

Ingredients

Contains: sesame (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Peel the cucumber if desired, halve it lengthwise, scoop out the seeds with a spoon, and cut it into thin half-moons.

  2. Peel the cantaloupe quarter, remove the seeds, and cut the flesh into bite-sized cubes.

  3. In a large bowl, whisk the rice vinegar, chili oil, white sugar, and a pinch of salt until the sugar dissolves.

  4. Add the cucumber and cantaloupe to the dressing and toss gently to coat.

  5. Taste and adjust with more sugar or salt as needed.

  6. Sprinkle the toasted sesame seeds over the salad just before serving.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cucumber + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together641 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Rice + sesametop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Cucumber + sesametop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together364 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Cucumber + vinegartop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,705 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Vinegar + sesametop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,133 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hydroxy-3-butanone (caramel-like, roast).

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