Name: Cooiced Cucumbers
Ingredients: Cucumbers; Coarse sea salt; Butter; Bread

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cooiced Cucumbers

Ingredients

Cucumbers
Coarse sea salt
Butter
Bread

Directions

Peel and cut cucumbers into quarters.
Remove the seeds from the cucumbers.
Boil the cucumbers in salted boiling water until tender.
Place the cooked cucumbers on buttered toast.
Spread additional butter on top.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cucumber + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together344 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Cucumber + buttertop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,185 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).