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Salad

Apple and Cucumber Salad

A salad of sliced apples and cucumber tossed with lemon juice, salt, pepper, and whipped cream.

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

Apple and Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Season the sliced apples and cucumber with salt and pepper.

  2. Sprinkle with lemon juice.

  3. Stir in a little whipped cream.

  4. Serve piled in a salad bowl.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  5. Apple + cucumbertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main body and crisp, sweet-tart flavor of the salad.
Cucumber
Adds cool, watery crispness that contrasts with the sweet apple.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and slows browning of the cut apple.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and a light, creamy texture that coats the fruit and vegetables.

The step that matters

Sprinkle with lemon juice. Cut apples oxidize and turn brown quickly once exposed to air. Acid from lemon juice slows this browning, so the juice should be added soon after slicing and before the cream.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, lemon, pepper, 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.

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