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Salad

Cucumber Salad

A chilled cucumber and onion salad with salt, pepper, parsley, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel the cucumbers thickly and soak them in ice water for 1.5 hours.

  2. Dry the cucumbers and slice them thinly.

  3. Slice the onion thinly and add it to the cucumbers.

  4. Mix 1 teaspoon of salt with water and soak the cucumber and onion for another hour.

  5. Squeeze out excess water and place in a salad bowl.

Dress and chill

  1. Sprinkle with pepper and parsley, then cover with vinegar.

  2. Chill in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

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

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

  2. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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
Their high water content makes up most of the salad's crisp, moist body.
Onion
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during soaking and chilling.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the salad its tangy, bright flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and onion, firming them up and seasoning the salad.

The step that matters

Squeeze out excess water. Cucumbers and onion release water after salting and soaking. If it is not squeezed out before dressing, the vinegar is diluted and the salad turns watery and loses its crispness.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, parsley, 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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