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Salad

Cucumber Salad

A salad of cucumber cups filled with sweetbread, cucumber, walnuts, and mayonnaise, served on lettuce leaves and topped with radish garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 cucumber

  1. Peel the cucumber and place it in ice water.

  2. Cut the cucumber into 3‑inch lengths and scoop out the insides to form cups.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix equal parts of sweetbreads, cucumbers, and English walnuts with mayonnaise.

  2. Fill the cucumber cups with the salad mixture.

  3. Set the cups on lettuce leaves.

  4. Top each salad with an additional teaspoon of mayonnaise.

  5. Garnish with a radish cut to resemble a rose.

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. Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Cucumber + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provides the main meaty body and tender texture of the salad filling.
English walnuts
Adds crunch and contrast to the soft filling.
Mayonnaise
Binds the filling and adds richness and moisture.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, lettuce, radish. 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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