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Salad

Cucumber Salad

A simple salad of sliced cucumbers seasoned with salt, pepper, vinegar, olive oil, pounded sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice the cucumbers thinly, leaving the stalk end intact.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  3. Add vinegar and a little olive oil to taste.

  4. For a refreshing variation, season with pounded sugar and lemon juice instead.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked 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
Form the crisp, watery body of the salad, providing most of its texture and moisture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Pounded sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the lemon juice in the variation.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity and aroma in the variation, in place of vinegar.

The step that matters

Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Salt draws water out of cucumber slices through osmosis. If the salad is dressed long before serving, it can become limp and watery, so season shortly before eating.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, vinegar, olive, sugar, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, olive, sugar, lemon. 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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