Name: Cucumbers in Slices
Ingredients: large cucumbers; large onions; coarse sea salt; white wine vinegar; mace; whole pepper; sliced ginger

Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumbers in Slices

Ingredients

Directions

Slice large cucumbers into thick slices and place them in a dish.
Slice two large onions thinly and layer them with the cucumbers, sprinkling coarse sea salt between each layer.
Cover with another dish and let stand for 24 hours.
Drain the cucumbers in a colander and place them in a jar.
Cover with white wine vinegar and let stand for 4 hours.
Boil the vinegar with a little salt, then add mace, whole pepper, and sliced ginger.
Pour the boiling vinegar over the cucumbers, cover tightly, and let cool.
Once cool, seal the jar and they will be ready to use in a few days.

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.

Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,050 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,800 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,595 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + gingertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together973 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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, white wine, vinegar, pepper, ginger):

Garlicfits better
Turmericfits better
Tarragonfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, white wine, vinegar, pepper, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.