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Salad

Cucumber Salad, French Style

A chilled cucumber salad seasoned with salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad, French Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the cucumbers. If small, slice them; if large, split them in half and scoop out the seeds.

  2. Slice the cucumbers finely and place them in a bowl.

  3. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and mix well. Let sit in a cool place for 1 hour.

  4. Drain off the water, pressing the cucumbers gently.

Dress and serve

  1. Season with black pepper, olive oil, vinegar, and additional salt if needed.

  2. Add the finely chopped parsley, mix well, and serve in a salad bowl.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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 bulk of the salad.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, softening them and concentrating their flavor.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives the dressing a smooth mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the cucumbers and balances the oil.
Fresh parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma and color.

The step that matters

Draining after salting. Salt draws out water from the cucumbers by osmosis. If the water is not drained off and the cucumbers pressed gently, the salad becomes diluted and soggy, and the dressing will not cling well.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

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