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Creamy Feta Greek Style Cucumber Pasta Salad

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Why it works: Cucumber and pasta 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

10-12 Servings

Ingredients

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

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By pickypalate. 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. Cucumber + pastatop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Olive + feta cheesetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,438 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  3. Olive + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together23,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Olive + yogurttop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Cucumber + feta cheesetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together369 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pasta, olive, feta cheese, garlic, yogurt, buttermilk):

  1. Chickpeabetter flavor fit
  2. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pasta, olive, feta cheese, garlic, yogurt, buttermilk. 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).