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Salad

Raw Cucumbers

Raw cucumbers seasoned with salt, pepper, vinegar, and optional olive oil and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Raw Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and slice the cucumbers thinly.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let sit for 30 minutes.

  3. Rinse off the salt with cold water and drain.

  4. Place cucumbers in ice water or add ice on top for 30 minutes to crisp.

Season and serve

  1. Just before serving, drain the cucumbers well.

  2. Season with black pepper, salt, and vinegar.

  3. Add olive oil and thin slices of raw onions if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh cucumbers
Provide the crisp, watery body that makes up the dish.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumber slices, concentrating flavour and firming their texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the salt.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a smooth mouthfeel that carries the seasoning.

The step that matters

Drain the cucumbers well before seasoning. Residual water dilutes the vinegar and seasoning and makes the dish watery. Draining thoroughly just before serving keeps the dressing concentrated and the slices crisp.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, vinegar, olive. 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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