Skip to main content
Salad

Cucumber Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, cucumbers, onion, and lettuce dressed with a mustard‑vinegar milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the potatoes in salted water. Let them cool.

  2. Cut the cooled potatoes into pieces.

  3. Slice the cucumbers and onion.

  4. Chop the lettuce.

  5. Sprinkle the salad with celery seed.

Make the dressing

  1. Combine milk, vinegar, sugar, salt, and mustard. Bring to a boil.

  2. Thicken the dressing with flour, stirring until smooth.

  3. Let the dressing cool.

Serve

  1. Pour it over the salad. Serve.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  5. Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Hold their shape and add body, giving the salad a substantial, starchy base.
Cucumbers
Provide crisp, moist texture and a fresh, cooling bulk to the salad.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the dressing and mellows the vinegar's sharpness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang and balances the sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the dressing so it clings to the salad instead of running off.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Thicken the dressing with flour, stirring until smooth. Flour must be fully hydrated and heated to thicken; if it is added without stirring or the dressing is not brought to a proper heat, lumps form and the sauce stays thin or grainy. Stirring distributes the starch evenly so it thickens smoothly as it cooks.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cucumber, onion, lettuce, milk, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cucumber, onion, lettuce, milk, vinegar, sugar. 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

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes