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Salad

Nut and Cucumber Salad

A salad of cubed cucumber and Brazil nuts, served on lettuce and dressed with French dressing or mayonnaise, garnished with radish roses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Nut and Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the cucumber and Brazil nuts.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on a bed of lettuce.

  2. Drizzle with French dressing or mayonnaise.

  3. Garnish with radishes shaped like roses.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Brazil nut + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Cucumber + brazil nuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumber
Provides the crisp, watery bulk and fresh texture of the salad.
Brazil nuts
Add a rich, buttery crunch that contrasts with the crisp cucumber.
French dressing or mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, coating the cucumber and nuts with flavour.

Swap the brazil nut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, lettuce, radish, rose):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Brazil nutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, lettuce, radish, rose. 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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