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Herbed Cream Cheese with Cucumber Salad

Cucumbers are at their crunchiest and juiciest in summer and this dish is a perfect foil for creamy soft cheese

By bbcgoodfood · From Open Recipes · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and cucumber work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and 410 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcgoodfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cheese + cucumbertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together410 recipes

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

  2. Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together447 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Parsley + tarragontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Chive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tarragon + shallottop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together492 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, chive, tarragon, shallot, garlic, red wine, vinegar):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Basilabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Rosemaryabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, chive, tarragon, shallot, garlic, red wine, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).