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Salad

Cucumber Salad

A chilled cucumber salad with vinegar, oil, salt, pepper, and celery salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off about an inch from each end of the cucumbers to remove the bitter flavor.

  2. Slice the cucumbers into ¼-inch thick rounds.

Chill and dress

  1. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the slices and set them on ice until thoroughly chilled.

  2. Remove from ice and add vinegar and oil alternately.

  3. Serve as a nice, crisp salad.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,745 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Make up the crisp, watery body of the salad.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the cucumber flavor.
Oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and softens the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Chilling the cucumber slices thoroughly. Cold keeps the cucumber slices firm and crisp. If they are not fully chilled before dressing, they release more water and the salad turns limp and diluted.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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