Skip to main content
Salad

Stuffed Cucumber Salad

A salad of cucumbers stuffed with shredded cabbage and cherry tomatoes, dressed with French dressing and garnished with nasturtium leaves and flowers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 722 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stuffed Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel the cucumbers carefully.

  2. Cut a strip off the top and scoop out the seeds.

  3. Soak the cucumbers in ice water for several hours to remove bitterness and make them crisp.

Fill and serve

  1. Just before serving, fill the cucumbers with shredded cabbage and halved cherry tomatoes.

  2. Drizzle with French dressing.

  3. Arrange on a platter and garnish with nasturtium leaves and flowers.

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 + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + cherry tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Cabbage + cherry tomatotop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp edible cups that hold the filling.
Shredded cabbage
Adds crunch and bulk to the filling.
Cherry tomatoes
Add juiciness and a sweet-acid bite to the filling.
French dressing
Adds fat and acidity that moisten and season the salad.

The step that matters

Soaking the cucumbers in ice water. Soaking for several hours draws water into the cucumber tissue, which firms the cell walls and keeps the cups crisp. Skipping or shortening the soak leaves them limp, and the soak also helps reduce bitterness.

Swap the cherry tomato

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Cherry tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cabbage. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipes