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Sauce

Cucumber Sauce

A chilled cucumber sauce made with grated cucumbers, mustard, olive oil, vinegar, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and grate or finely chop the cucumbers.

Make the sauce

  1. Blend the dry mustard with boiling water until it forms a sticky paste.

  2. Gradually add the olive oil and a little vinegar to the mustard mixture.

  3. Stir in the egg yolk.

Chill

  1. Chill the sauce in the refrigerator until needed.

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. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil
Forms the body of the sauce as fat droplets suspended in the mixture, giving richness.
Egg yolk
Its lecithin helps hold the oil and water together, giving the sauce a smooth, thick texture.
Dry mustard
Its compounds help stabilise the emulsion and add sharp, pungent flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.
Cucumbers
Supply fresh, mild flavour and moisture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil gradually. Oil must be added slowly to the mustard mixture so the droplets can disperse and be held by the mustard and egg yolk emulsifiers. Adding it too quickly can overwhelm them, so the sauce separates instead of thickening into a smooth emulsion.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Lettucefits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, olive, vinegar, egg. 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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