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Cucumber Salad Sandwiches

A sandwich made with thin white bread and a cucumber salad of sliced cucumbers, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine sliced cucumbers with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and red pepper in a bowl.

  2. Let the mixture stand for one hour.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the cucumber mixture between thin squares of white bread.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  4. Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 that gives the filling its fresh texture and moisture.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a smooth mouthfeel that carries the lemon and seasoning through the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cucumber flavour and balances the oil.
Thin white bread
Provides a soft, mild base that holds the filling between its two slices.

The step that matters

Serve immediately. Salt and standing draw water out of the cucumbers. Once that moisture reaches the bread, it softens and turns soggy, so the sandwiches are best assembled and eaten right away.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, lemon, pepper, bread. 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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