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Cucumber Aspic

A chilled cucumber and onion aspic made with gelatin, seasoned with salt and white pepper.

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 ↓

Cucumber Aspic

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Peel the cucumbers and cut them into thick slices.

  2. Place the cucumber slices and sliced onion in a pot with 1 quart of water.

  3. Simmer for 1 hour.

Make the jelly

  1. Stir in the soaked gelatine until dissolved.

  2. Season the jelly with salt and white pepper, then strain it.

  3. Set the jelly aside to cool.

Set and serve

  1. Once cooled, pour into small molds or a salad bowl.

  2. Serve on lettuce leaves, preferably with French dressing.

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. Cucumber + white peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Onion + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Make up the bulk of the jelly and add fresh, watery body and flavour.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Onion
Adds a savoury aroma that flavours the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully. Gelatine must dissolve completely into the warm liquid before cooling. Undissolved granules leave specks and create weak, uneven set, so the jelly may not hold its shape when unmoulded.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, 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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