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Salad

Cucumber Salad

A salad of thinly sliced cucumber dressed with oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and parsley.

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

  1. Peel and slice the cucumber thinly.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then place on a sieve to drain.

Dress and serve

  1. Arrange in a salad dish and dress with salad oil and vinegar.

  2. If desired, serve in small glass dishes.

  3. Sprinkle with chopped parsley before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumber
Forms the crisp, watery body of the salad once sliced thinly.
Salad oil
Adds fat and carries flavour across the cucumber slices.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Draining the salted cucumber. Salt draws water out of cucumber by osmosis. Draining well keeps the dressing from being diluted and the salad from turning soggy.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, parsley. 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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