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Salad

Sliced Cucumbers

Thinly sliced cucumbers dressed with oil, vinegar, salt, cayenne pepper, and optionally sour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Sliced Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Soak the slices in very cold salted water for 1 hour.

  3. Drain and dry the slices on a towel.

Dress and serve

  1. Dress the cucumbers with oil and vinegar, and season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  2. Alternatively, dress with cream salad dressing made by mixing sour cream with vinegar, pepper, and salt.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, watery body of the salad that the dressing coats.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the alternative dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the cucumber.
Oil
Adds fat and carries flavor through the oil and vinegar dressing.

The step that matters

Drying the slices. Excess water left on the cucumber slices thins the dressing and dilutes its flavor, so the slices should be patted fully dry before dressing.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

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