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Salad

Cucumber Salad

A salad of thinly sliced cucumbers and onions dressed with vinegar, olive oil, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and slice the cucumbers very thin.

  2. Soak the cucumbers in salted water for 2 hours before serving.

  3. Drain the cucumbers and slice the onion over them.

Dress and serve

  1. Add ¼ cup vinegar and ¼ teaspoon white pepper.

  2. In a bowl, combine ½ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon black pepper, and 3 tablespoons olive oil; stir until the salt is dissolved.

  3. Stir in 1 tablespoon vinegar and 1 tablespoon parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

  5. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 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

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, watery body of the salad once thinly sliced and salted.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a smooth mouthfeel that carries the seasonings across the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the oil.
Onion
Adds sharp, aromatic flavor that mellows as it sits in the dressing.

The step that matters

Soak the cucumbers in salted water. Salt draws water out of the cucumber slices by osmosis, so the cucumbers soften and lose excess liquid. Draining them afterward keeps the dressing from being diluted and the salad from turning watery.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, vinegar, pepper, olive, parsley):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, vinegar, pepper, olive, parsley. 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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