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Salad

Cucumber Salad

A chilled salad of sliced cucumbers, onions, and lettuce dressed with sour cream, vinegar, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Cover cucumbers with water, adding salt and baking soda.

  2. Let stand for one hour.

  3. Drain and rinse cucumbers.

  4. Mix cucumbers with sliced onion.

Dress and serve

  1. Combine sour cream, vinegar, and pepper.

  2. Pour the mixture over the salad.

  3. Sprinkle with minced parsley.

  4. Set the salad on ice.

  5. Serve on lettuce hearts.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp body of the salad, which the salt and soaking help firm up.
Sour cream
Forms a thick, creamy dressing that coats the cucumber and onion slices.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the creamy dressing and balances its richness.
Onion
Adds sharp, aromatic flavor that contrasts with the cool cucumber and cream.

The step that matters

Drain and rinse cucumbers. Cucumbers hold a lot of water, and the salt and baking soda soak must be fully rinsed off. Draining well keeps the dressing from thinning and stops the salad from tasting salty or soapy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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