Skip to main content
Main

Cucumber Salad

A salad of sliced cucumbers dressed with oil or ham gravy, vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and optional onions.

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

Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers.

  2. Mix the cucumbers with salt and let them stand for 30 minutes.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the oil or ham gravy, vinegar, and sugar.

  2. Drain the cucumbers slightly and add them to the mixture.

  3. Add black pepper and stir well.

  4. If desired, add sliced onions.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 base of the salad.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, seasoning them and softening their texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with gentle sweetness.
Sweet oil or ham gravy
Adds fat and richness to coat the cucumber slices.

The step that matters

Let the cucumbers stand in salt. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers through osmosis. Standing for the full 30 minutes firms the slices, and draining them slightly before dressing keeps the salad from becoming diluted and watery.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, ham, vinegar, sugar, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, ham, vinegar, sugar, pepper. 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 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes