Name: Cucumber Salad
Ingredients: Cucumbers; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; Olive oil; White wine vinegar

Why it works: Cucumber and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

If cucumbers are bitter, cut off ½ inch from the stem end before peeling.
Slice the cucumbers very thin.
Serve the slices with coarse sea salt, black pepper, olive oil, and white wine vinegar.

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.

Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,297 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,776 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, olive, white wine, vinegar):

Capsicumfits better
Tomatofits better
Mustardfits about as well
Cucumberthe original

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