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Boiled Cucumbers

Boiled cucumbers served on fried bread with a hot egg sauce seasoned with pepper, salt, and onion juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and cut the cucumbers into quarters lengthwise.

  2. Remove the seeds and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  3. Let stand for 1 hour.

Cook and serve

  1. Drain the cucumbers and cook in boiling water until tender.

  2. Serve on fried bread with a hot egg sauce seasoned with pepper, salt, and onion juice.

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

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Cooked until tender, they make up the main body of the dish.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cucumbers during the hour of standing.
Fried bread
Provides a crisp base for the cucumbers to rest on.
Onion juice
Adds aroma and sharpness to the hot egg sauce.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, onion. 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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