Name: Cucumber Salad
Ingredients: 2 cucumbers; Coarse sea salt; Thin slices of onion; Thin slices of radishes; Chopped parsley or mint; Pepper; 2 tablespoons olive oil; Vinegar

Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Pare and slice the cucumbers thinly.
Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and press with a plate for 1 to 2 hours.
Drain the cucumbers and add the onion, radishes, and parsley or mint.
Season with pepper, sugar, olive oil, and enough vinegar to moisten well.

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.

Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together212 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Radish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together120 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

Swap the onion

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

Lettucefits better
Broccolifits better
Mustardfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, radish, parsley, pepper, olive, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.