Skip to main content
Salad

Cucumber Salad

A salad of sliced cucumber dressed with oil, vinegar, sour cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumber

  1. Peel the cucumber and cut it into thin slices.

  2. Sprinkle the slices lightly with salt and let them sit for about an hour.

  3. Squeeze the cucumber slices slightly to remove excess moisture.

Dress and serve

  1. Arrange the slices on a salad dish.

  2. In a bowl, mix the salad oil, vinegar, sour cream, and pepper together.

  3. Dress the cucumber slices with the mixed dressing.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumber
Forms the main body of the salad, giving crisp, cool texture when sliced thin.
Salt
Draws out moisture from the cucumber slices, which is then squeezed away to keep the salad crisp.
Sour cream
Adds creaminess and a tangy richness that binds the dressing together.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the fat of the oil and cream.

The step that matters

Squeezing the salted cucumber slices. Salt draws water out of the cucumber by osmosis. If the slices are not squeezed gently after resting, the excess liquid will thin the dressing and make the salad watery.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, cream. 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.

More cucumber salad recipes

Tomato 18Pineapple 10Sweetbread 9French 6Creamed 5German 5 See all 179 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes