Name: Water Cress and Cucumber Salad
Ingredients: water cress; 2 medium cucumbers; 2 tablespoons finely chopped chives or thinly sliced onion; French Dressing No. I

Why it works: Cucumber and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 244 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Water Cress and Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

water cress
2 medium cucumbers
2 tablespoons finely chopped chives or thinly sliced onion
French Dressing No. I

Directions

Prepare

Wash and remove roots from the water cress, then drain and chill.
Pare and dice the cucumbers into ¼ inch pieces, then chill.

Assemble and serve

Arrange the water cress in a border on a shallow dish.
Place the diced cucumbers in the center of the water cress.
Sprinkle with chopped chives or sliced onion.
Serve with French Dressing No. I.

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.

Cucumber + chivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together244 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Water cress: Forms the crisp green border and fresh, peppery base of the salad.
Cucumbers: Provide cool, crisp, watery bulk in the centre of the salad.
Chives or onion: Add a sharp, aromatic bite that contrasts with the cucumber.

“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.