Why it works: Cucumber and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,067 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Cucumber Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Chill cucumbers in ice water for half an hour.
Slice cucumbers thinly into a cold dish.
Dress and serve
Squeeze lemons over the cucumbers.
Add ice water to match the amount of lemon juice.
Stir everything together and serve immediately.
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.
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Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,067 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cucumbers
- Provide the crisp, watery bulk of the salad.
- Lemons
- Add acidity that brightens the flavour of the cucumbers.
- Ice water
- Keeps the cucumbers cold and crisp, and dilutes the lemon juice.
The step that matters
Chill the cucumbers in ice water. Cold water firms the cucumber's cell walls, so the slices stay crisp rather than going limp once dressed and served.
“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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