Cucumber Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Peel the cucumber and slice it as thinly as possible.
Sprinkle with salt and let it sit, tossing occasionally to extract water.
Drain off the water and add plenty of oil, mixing well to coat each slice.
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
What each ingredient does
- Cucumber
- Provides the crisp, watery bulk that makes up the body of the salad.
- Salt
- Draws water out of the cucumber slices through osmosis, concentrating flavour and firming the texture.
- Oil
- Coats each slice, adding fat and richness and carrying flavour across the surface.
The step that matters
Sprinkle with salt and let it sit. Salt draws water out of the cucumber by osmosis. If it sits too briefly the salad stays watery, and if you skip draining the excess liquid it dilutes the oil and dressing. Draining well before adding oil keeps the slices coated rather than slick.
“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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