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Salad

Cucumber Salad

A salad of sliced cucumbers and onions seasoned with salt, mustard, seeds, pepper, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the cucumbers and onions.

  2. Sprinkle with 2 cups of coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

  3. Drain the cucumbers as dry as possible.

Assemble and cover

  1. Mix the ground mustard, mustard seed, celery seed, and ground pepper.

  2. Layer the cucumbers and spices alternately until all are used.

  3. Cover with cider vinegar.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, bulk body of the salad.
Onions
Add sharpness and savour that mellows during the salted rest.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and onions, firming their texture.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the salad and sharpens its flavour.
Mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, slightly bitter bite when mixed with the spices.

The step that matters

Drain the cucumbers as dry as possible. Salting pulls water out of the vegetables, but any water left behind dilutes the vinegar and makes the salad soggy and less crisp. Thorough draining keeps the texture firm and the dressing concentrated.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, celery, pepper, cider, 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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