Skip to main content
Main

Cucumber Salad

A chilled cucumber salad with tomatoes, pepper, and white French sauce, topped with grated onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,405 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak sliced cucumbers in a mixture of salt and ice water for 1 hour.

  2. Drain the cucumbers and mix with sliced tomatoes.

Season and serve

  1. Add black pepper and stir gently.

  2. Serve with white French sauce and top with grated onion.

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 + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 main body of the salad, providing crisp texture and fresh moisture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers while they soak, firming their texture and seasoning them.
Tomato
Adds juiciness and a mild acidity that balances the cucumber.
White french sauce
Adds a creamy, rich dressing that coats the vegetables and mellows their sharpness.
Grated onion
Contributes pungent aroma and a sharp bite on top of the salad.

The step that matters

Soak the cucumbers in salted ice water. Salt draws water out of the cucumber through osmosis, while ice water keeps it cold and crisp. Soaking for the full hour gives the cucumbers a firmer texture so they do not turn soggy once mixed with the juicy tomato.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, pepper, sauce. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes