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Cucumber Salad

A cucumber salad made by hollowing a cucumber, filling it with chopped cucumber, pineapple, and nuts, served on lettuce with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hollow out the cucumber, creating a rectangular opening almost the length of the cucumber.

  2. Chop the removed cucumber pieces and mix them with the chopped pineapple and nuts.

  3. Fill the hollowed cucumber with the mixture.

Serve

  1. Arrange the filled cucumber on lettuce leaves and garnish with whole nut meats.

  2. Serve with oil 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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together271 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Cucumber + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cucumber + nutstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumber
Forms the hollow edible shell that holds the filling and gives the salad its crisp, cool body.
Pineapple
Adds sweetness and a bright acidity that contrasts with the mild cucumber.
Nuts
Add crunch and a toasty, fatty richness to the chopped filling.
Oil mayonnaise
Adds creamy fat and moisture when served alongside the salad.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, nuts, lettuce, meat):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, nuts, lettuce, meat. 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.

More cucumber salad recipes

Tomato 18Pineapple 10Sweetbread 9French 6Creamed 5German 5 See all 179 →

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