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Salad

Cucumber Salad

A chilled cucumber and onion salad seasoned with salt, pepper, vinegar, and parsley.

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

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the cucumbers thickly from end to end and soak them in ice water for 1 hour.

  2. Wipe the cucumbers and slice them thinly, along with the onion.

Salt and drain

  1. Sprinkle salt over the cucumbers and onion, shake gently, cover, and let sit in brine for another hour.

  2. Squeeze out all excess water from the cucumbers.

Dress and serve

  1. Place in a salad bowl, sprinkle with white pepper, and add chopped parsley.

  2. Pour enough vinegar to just cover the salad. Optionally, mix in sliced radishes.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Parsley + radishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together120 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Make up the bulk of the salad, providing crisp texture and fresh moisture.
Onion
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that mellows as the salad sits.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the salad and seasons the vegetables.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and onion, softening them and concentrating flavor.

The step that matters

Squeeze out all excess water from the cucumbers. Salt draws moisture out of the cucumbers through osmosis. If excess water is left behind, it dilutes the vinegar and makes the salad watery and limp.

Swap the radish

The recipe marks radish as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, white pepper, vinegar, parsley):

  1. Radishthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Lettucefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, white pepper, vinegar, parsley. 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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