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Cucumber Salad

A salad of sliced cucumbers dressed with sweet oil or ham gravy, vinegar, sugar, salt, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers.

  2. Mix the cucumbers with coarse sea salt and let them stand for 30 minutes.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix sweet oil or ham gravy with vinegar and sugar.

  2. Add the cucumbers, pressing them slightly.

  3. Stir in black pepper and mix well.

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 + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Ham + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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 body of the salad, which salt draws out and softens.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the cucumbers and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds gentle sweetness that offsets the vinegar's sharpness.
Sweet oil
Carries flavor and adds a smooth, rich mouthfeel to the dressing.

The step that matters

Salting the cucumbers and letting them stand. Salt draws water out of the cucumber slices by osmosis. Letting them stand for the full 30 minutes softens them and removes excess moisture, so the dressing does not become watery and diluted.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, vinegar, sugar, pepper):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cabbagefits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, vinegar, sugar, pepper. 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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