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Salad

Sliced Cucumbers

A chilled cucumber salad seasoned with salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar, and optional onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Sliced Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the cucumbers and soak them in ice water for 1 hour before serving.

  2. Slice the cucumbers and arrange them on a serving plate.

  3. Add bits of ice among the slices.

Season and serve

  1. Just before serving, season with salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar.

  2. If desired, slice the young onions and add them to the cucumbers.

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. Olive + vinegartop 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 bulk of the salad.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness that carries the flavour of the seasonings.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the cucumbers and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Just before serving, season with salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar.. Salt draws water out of cucumber slices by osmosis, so seasoning too early leaves the salad limp and diluted. Adding the dressing just before serving keeps the cucumbers crisp.

Swap the onion

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

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

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