Name: Cucumber Cup
Ingredients: 1 cucumber; tartare sauce; lettuce leaves

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Cup

Ingredients

1 cucumber
tartare sauce
lettuce leaves

Directions

Peel the cucumber and cut it into quarters crosswise.
Remove the center from one piece to create a cup.
Fill the cup with tartare sauce.
Serve on a lettuce leaf.

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.

Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Sauce + lettucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,019 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Cucumber + saucetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,174 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).