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Salad

Cucumber Salad II

A pickled cucumber salad with onions, peppers, mustard seed, celery seed, vinegar, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad II

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle cucumbers, onions, and peppers with salt and let stand overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the mixture.

Pickle

  1. Boil vinegar and sugar together until dissolved, then let cool.

  2. Pour the cooled vinegar mixture over the vegetables.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provides the crisp, watery body that salting and pickling keep firm.
White onions
Adds sharp aroma and savory bite that mellows during pickling.
Peppers
Adds fresh, slightly sweet flavor and crunch to the salad.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, softening them and seasoning the mix.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that pickles the vegetables and keeps them tangy.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Let the vinegar mixture cool before pouring. Hot liquid would partly cook the cucumbers, onions, and peppers, softening them and dulling their crisp texture. Letting the sweetened vinegar cool keeps the vegetables crunchy while they soak up the pickling flavor.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, mustard, celery, vinegar, sugar. 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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