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Salad

Cucumber Salad

A simple salad of sliced cucumbers, seasoned with salt, olive oil, vinegar, and pepper, optionally with onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers.

  2. Layer the slices in a dish, sprinkling coarse sea salt over each layer.

  3. Let sit for 1 hour to draw out moisture.

  4. Drain the cucumbers thoroughly.

Dress and serve

  1. Dress with olive oil, vinegar, and black pepper.

  2. Add sliced onion if desired.

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 + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  5. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body of the salad, releasing moisture when salted.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumber slices, concentrating their flavor and firming their texture.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and coats the cucumber slices.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the salad.

The step that matters

Drain the cucumbers thoroughly. Salting pulls water out of the cucumber slices. If excess liquid remains, it dilutes the dressing and makes the salad watery, so the slices need to be drained well before dressing.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, olive, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, olive, vinegar, 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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