Skip to main content
Salad

Cucumber Salad

A salad of finely minced cucumbers dressed with salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar, and chervil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 144 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel the cucumbers and cut them in half lengthwise.

  2. Remove the seeds and mince the cucumbers finely.

  3. Place the minced cucumbers in a bowl and sprinkle with salt.

  4. Let them sit for 25 minutes to exude moisture.

  5. Drain the cucumbers and press them in a towel to remove excess moisture.

Dress and serve

  1. Season with pepper, olive oil, and vinegar.

  2. Add the chopped chervil and mix well.

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 + cherviltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Pepper + cherviltop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Olive + cherviltop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, watery bulk of the salad, which salt draws out and drains away.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel that carries the flavour of the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the richness of the oil.
Chervil
Adds a delicate, fresh herbal aroma to the finished salad.

The step that matters

Pressing the salted cucumbers dry. Salt pulls water out of the cucumber through osmosis. If the pieces are not well drained and pressed, the excess liquid thins the dressing and leaves the salad soggy and diluted.

Swap the chervil

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Chervilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, olive, 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.

More cucumber salad recipes

Tomato 18Pineapple 10Sweetbread 9French 6Creamed 5German 5 See all 179 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes