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Salad

Cucumber Salad

A salad of sliced cucumbers seasoned with salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, and chervil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 144 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel the cucumbers and cut them in half lengthwise.

  2. Remove the seeds and mince the cucumbers finely.

Draw out moisture

  1. Place them in a bowl, sprinkle with salt, and let them sit for 25 minutes to exude moisture.

  2. Drain the cucumbers and press them in a towel.

Season and finish

  1. Season with pepper, oil, and vinegar, then add chopped chervil.

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 + cherviltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Pepper + cherviltop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + cherviltop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Make up the main body of the salad, providing crisp texture and fresh, mild flavour.
Table salt
Draws moisture out of the cucumbers through osmosis, concentrating flavour and firming the texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the richness of the oil.
Oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Salting and pressing the cucumbers. Salt draws out water from the cucumber. If the cucumbers are not drained and pressed well, the excess liquid dilutes the dressing and makes the salad watery and limp.

Swap the chervil

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Chervilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, 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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