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Salad

Apple and Cucumber Salad

A salad of sliced cucumber and apple, seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon juice, topped with whipped cream and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Apple and Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and core the cucumber and apple.

  2. Cut them into thin slices.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place in a salad dish.

  2. Pour enough slightly whipped cream to cover.

  3. Sprinkle a little cayenne pepper on top and 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + appletop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumber
Adds crisp texture and fresh moisture to the salad.
Sour cooking apple
Adds tart flavour and firm crunch that contrasts with the cream.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and slows browning of the cut apple.
Slightly whipped cream
Adds richness and a soft, creamy coating over the fruit and vegetable.

The step that matters

Pour enough slightly whipped cream to cover. Cream that is whipped too stiffly will not pour or spread evenly, so it clumps instead of coating the slices. Keeping it soft lets it settle smoothly over the salad.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, lemon, cream. 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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