Name: Cucumber Dolmasi
Ingredients: Cucumbers; Rice; Chopped raw meat; Seasoning; Water

Why it works: Cucumber and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 734 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cucumber Dolmasi

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Pare the cucumbers and cut off one end.
Hollow out the cucumbers by removing the seeds.
Mix rice with chopped raw meat and seasoning.
Fill the cucumbers half full with the rice mixture.
Place the cucumbers in a baking dish with the open ends opposite each other.
Cover the cucumbers with water.
Bake at 300°F (150°C) for one hour.

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 + ricetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together734 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Rice + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Cucumber + meattop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together323 recipes

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