Skip to main content
Salad

Cucumber Salad

A chilled salad of thinly sliced cucumbers and onions dressed with salt, pepper, vinegar, and optional olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers thinly.

  2. Slice the onions in the same manner.

  3. Mix the cucumbers and onions.

Salt and drain

  1. Place the mixture in salt water to extract juice.

  2. Drain the mixture and transfer to a serving dish.

Dress and serve

  1. Season with black pepper.

  2. Cover with vinegar.

  3. Add olive oil if desired.

  4. Serve on curly lettuce leaves.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 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
Provide the crisp, watery bulk of the salad.
Onions
Add sharp pungency that mellows as the salad sits.
Wine or cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and seasons the vegetables.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the dressing.

The step that matters

Place the mixture in salt water to extract juice. Salt draws water out of cucumber and onion through osmosis. Soaking too long leaves the vegetables limp and overly salty, while too short a soak leaves them wet and bland, so timing matters.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, wine, olive, lettuce):

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

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

More cucumber salad recipes

Tomato 18Pineapple 10Sweetbread 9French 6Creamed 5German 5 See all 179 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes