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Kim's Summer Cucumber Pasta Salad

"This summery pasta salad recipe was given to me by my sister, Kim. It is my husband's favorite side of the summer! Enjoy!"

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pasta and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 298 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

8 servings
Prep15 min
Cook15 min

Ingredients

Contains: wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add the bow tie pasta, and cook until tender, about 10 to 12 minutes. Drain and rinse under cold water until cool.

  2. While the pasta cooks, combine the white vinegar, white sugar, and 1 cup water in a small saucepan. Heat over medium, stirring until the sugar dissolves, about 3 minutes.

  3. Stir the vegetable oil, prepared mustard, dried dill, salt, and ground black pepper into the warm vinegar mixture. Let the dressing cool for a few minutes.

  4. Place the thinly sliced cucumber and thinly sliced onion in a large bowl. Pour the dressing over them and toss to coat.

  5. Add the cooled pasta to the bowl and toss until everything is evenly combined.

  6. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour so the flavors blend, then toss again before serving chilled.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pasta + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Cucumber + dilltop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together530 recipes

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

  3. Dill + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,630 recipes

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

  4. Dill + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together560 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Vinegar and mustard share little aroma chemistry, yet 14,067 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pasta, cucumber, dill, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Broccolibetter flavor fit
  3. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pasta, cucumber, dill, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).