Skip to main content
Main

Fish in Cucumber Cases

Fish in cucumber shells baked with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce seasoned with lemon, parsley, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fish in Cucumber Cases

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 375°F (190°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish and cucumbers

  1. Cut off one-third of each cucumber lengthwise and scoop out the insides, leaving shells less than an inch thick.

  2. Boil the fish in salted water with the vinegar for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove skin and bones from the fish and break it into inch pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, blend the flour with the butter, then add the milk and stir until smooth.

  2. Season the sauce with salt, lemon juice, parsley, and cayenne, then add the fish.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the cucumber shells with the fish mixture and bake uncovered at 375°F (190°C) for 15 minutes.

  2. Cover the cucumbers and bake for an additional 10 minutes.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut or white fish
Forms the main filling, flaking into tender pieces when cooked.
Cucumbers
Act as edible shells that hold the filling and stay moist while baking.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, stable white sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the sauce and helps form the roux with flour.
Milk
Forms the body of the sauce, giving it a creamy texture when thickened.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the milk until smooth. Adding liquid to a flour and butter mixture without stirring can leave lumps. Stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, vinegar, flour, butter, milk, lemon, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, vinegar, flour, butter, milk, lemon, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes