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Salad

Radish Salad

A salad of thinly sliced radishes and cucumber dressed with oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Radish and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Radish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Scrape the radishes and cut them into very thin slices.

  2. Peel and slice the cucumber.

  3. Combine the radishes and cucumber in a salad bowl.

Dress and serve

  1. Mix the salad oil and vinegar in equal quantities.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and a pinch of sugar.

  3. Pour the dressing over the salad and sprinkle with chopped capers.

  4. 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. Radish + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Radish + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Radish + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Radishes
Provide the crisp texture and peppery bite that define the salad.
Cucumber
Adds cool, moist crunch and freshness to the salad.
Salad oil
Carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Capers
Add briny, sharp notes that contrast with the vegetables.

The step that matters

Dress the salad just before serving. Salt and vinegar draw water out of sliced radishes and cucumber, so they soften and become limp if left to sit. Dressing and serving immediately keeps the vegetables crisp.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (radish, cucumber, vinegar, pepper, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against radish, cucumber, vinegar, pepper, 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.

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