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Salad

Cucumber and Tomato Salad

A salad of lettuce topped with sliced cucumber and tomatoes, dressed with mayonnaise or French dressing and seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber 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 and Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place a bed of crisp lettuce in a salad dish.

  2. Layer sliced cucumber and sliced tomatoes on top.

Make the second version

  1. For the second version, peel tomatoes by dipping them in boiling water, remove the centers, and drain upside down.

  2. Sprinkle the tomatoes with salt and fill them with cubed cucumber mixed with mayonnaise.

  3. Serve on lettuce leaves.

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. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 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

Tomatoes
Provide juicy body and acidity that balance the cucumber's mild, cool flavor.
Cucumber
Adds crisp texture and cooling moisture to the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess that bind the cubed cucumber filling.

The step that matters

Draining the peeled tomatoes upside down. Tomatoes hold a lot of watery juice. If they are not drained well, the juice thins the dressing and makes the salad soggy. Draining removes free liquid so the filling and toppings stay firm.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cucumber. 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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