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Salad

Cucumber {Concombre)

Thinly sliced cucumber marinated with salt, oil, vinegar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,564 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cucumber {Concombre)

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Lay the slices on a dish and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  3. Cover and let them sit for 1 to 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Drain the slices well and arrange them on small glass dishes.

  2. Season with a little salad oil and French wine vinegar.

  3. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  5. Wine + parsleytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumber
Provides the crisp, watery body of the salad once sliced.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumber slices, softening them and concentrating their flavor.
Salad oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives the dressing a smooth mouthfeel.
French wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the cucumber and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Drain the slices well. Salt draws liquid out of the cucumber, and any water left behind will thin the oil and vinegar dressing and dilute its flavor. Thorough draining keeps the seasoning concentrated and the slices crisp.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, wine, vinegar. 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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