Skip to main content
Salad

Cucumber Salad

A salad of sliced cucumbers and onions pickled with salt, mustard seeds, celery seed, olive oil, and cold vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and cut cucumbers into thick slices.

  2. Combine cucumbers and sliced onions in a crock with salt.

  3. Let mixture stand overnight.

Dress and cover

  1. Strain the mixture and add mustard seeds, celery seed, and olive oil.

  2. Mix well and cover with cold vinegar.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 body of the salad.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and onions, softening their texture and seasoning them.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness that carries the flavour of the seeds.
Mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent heat and a characteristic bite.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the salad.

The step that matters

Let mixture stand overnight. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and onions through osmosis. Standing long enough lets them soften and season evenly; rinsing or straining too early leaves them crunchy and unevenly salted.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, celery, 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