Name: Eggs with Cucumbers
Ingredients: Cucumbers; Onions; Coarse sea salt; Vinegar; Water; Lemon juice; Pepper; Eggs

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Eggs with Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Peel and halve the cucumbers, remove the seeds, and slice them along with some onions.
Soak the cucumbers and onions in salt and vinegar for 1 hour.
Drain and fry them until slightly brown.
Add a little water and let them stew until the sauce is thick.
If the sauce is not tart enough, add a little lemon juice, pepper, and salt.
Top the cucumbers with poached or fried eggs.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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).
Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,067 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 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 onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Radishfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

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