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Salad

Cucumber Salad

A salad of thinly sliced cucumbers dressed with vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, and parsley, served over lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Peel cucumbers thinly and cut into thin slices.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, combine olive oil and vinegar in a 2:1 ratio.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.

  3. Mix well by tossing and set on ice before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  4. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  5. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 that makes up most of the salad.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the oil and the cucumbers' mild sweetness.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives the dressing a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Mix well by tossing and set on ice before serving. Cucumbers release water and soften once salted or dressed, so tossing just before serving and keeping the salad cold helps the slices stay crisp.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, olive, pepper, lettuce):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, olive, pepper, lettuce. 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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