Why it works: Cucumber and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,346 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Fried Cucumbers
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Peel the cucumbers and slice them crosswise into ¼-inch slices.
Sprinkle the slices with coarse sea salt and let them sit on a towel for a while.
Coat and fry
Dip each slice in the beaten egg, then coat with cornmeal or breadcrumbs.
Drop the coated slices into hot oil and fry until golden.
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.
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Cucumber + eggtop 23% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,346 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Large cucumbers
- Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender-crisp when sliced and fried.
- Beaten egg
- Acts as a sticky binder so the cornmeal or breadcrumbs adhere to the slices.
- Cornmeal or breadcrumbs
- Form a crisp golden coating that browns in the hot oil.
The step that matters
Salting and drying the slices. Salt draws moisture out of the cucumber slices. If they stay wet, the coating will not adhere well and can slide off or turn soggy in the hot oil, so the slices should be patted dry before dipping.
“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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