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Salad

Raw Cucumbers

A simple seasoned cucumber dish served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Raw Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and slice the cucumbers thinly.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let sit for 30 minutes.

  3. Rinse off the salt with cold water and drain.

  4. Soak in ice water for 30 minutes to crisp them.

  5. Drain again before serving.

Season and serve

  1. Season with pepper, vinegar, and olive oil if desired.

  2. Mix in thin slices of raw onions if using.

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 + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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 body that makes up most of the dish.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumber slices, which then softens and seasons them.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the cucumbers.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smoothness that carries the flavor of the seasoning.

The step that matters

Rinse off the salt and drain. Salt left on the slices makes the dish too salty and keeps drawing out water. Rinsing removes the surface salt, and draining removes excess liquid so the dressing is not diluted.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, vinegar, olive):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, vinegar, olive. 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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