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Salad

Cucumber Salad

A chilled cucumber salad with onions, sour cream, vinegar, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the sliced cucumbers with salt and let them stand for 2 hours.

  2. Drain and rinse the cucumbers in ice water.

Dress and serve

  1. Add the sliced onions, sour cream, vinegar, and white pepper.

  2. Serve immediately while very cold.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, watery bulk of the salad, which salting firms up and then drains.
Sour cream
Adds creamy richness and body that coats the cucumber and onion slices.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the sour cream.
Onions
Contribute sharp aroma and a pungent bite that stands up to the cream.

The step that matters

Draining and rinsing the salted cucumbers. Salt draws water out of the cucumber slices by osmosis. If they are not drained and rinsed well, the leftover liquid thins the sour cream dressing and leaves the salad watery.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, cream, 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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