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Salad

Spiced Cucumber Salad

A salad of sliced cucumbers, onions, and sweet peppers tossed together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Spiced Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice the cucumbers and place them in a large bowl.

  2. Add the chopped onion, sweet red pepper, and sweet green pepper.

  3. Toss the vegetables together until well combined.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Make up the bulk of the salad and supply crisp, watery texture.
Onion
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that mellows the cucumber's mildness.
Sweet red pepper
Adds sweetness, color, and a crisp bite.
Sweet green pepper
Adds fresh, slightly bitter vegetal flavor and crunch.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper. 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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