Skip to main content
Salad

Novelty Salad

A chilled cucumber salad made with gelatin, lemon juice, and seasonings.

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

Why it works: Cucumber and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,067 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Novelty Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and grate the cucumbers.

  2. Simmer the grated cucumbers in 1 cup of water for 5 minutes.

  3. Add enough hot water to make 1 pint.

Set and serve

  1. Stir in the lemon juice, salt, white pepper, and gelatin.

  2. Pour the mixture into a ring mold to set.

  3. Once chilled, serve with sliced tomatoes and mayonnaise.

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 + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cucumber + white peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + gelatintop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  5. Cucumber + gelatintop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body and fresh flavour of the salad.
Gelatin
Sets the liquid so the salad holds its shape when chilled.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the cucumber.

The step that matters

Stir in the gelatin. Gelatin must be fully dissolved in the warm liquid before the mold goes into the cold, or it will set unevenly and leave grainy or rubbery patches. Stirring until no granules remain gives a smooth, evenly firm set.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, lemon, gelatin):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, lemon, gelatin. 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.

You might also like

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