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Cucumbers, Spanish Style

A Spanish-style cucumber dish simmered in veal gravy and Espagnole sauce, finished with butter and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cucumbers, Spanish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel and halve the cucumbers, then scoop out the seeds.

  2. Cut the cucumbers into scallops and parboil them for 2 minutes.

  3. Immerse them in cold water and dry on a napkin.

Make the sauce

  1. Place them in a buttered flat saucepan and season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

  2. Cover and simmer until the moisture is reduced.

  3. Add veal gravy and Espagnole sauce, and cook until tender.

  4. Strain the gravy through a fine sieve into another saucepan and reduce to the proper consistency.

  5. Remove from heat, add butter and chopped parsley, stirring until the butter melts.

  6. Pour the sauce over the cucumbers and serve.

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

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

  3. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they cook in the sauce.
Veal gravy
Adds savory depth and body to the sauce that coats the cucumbers.
Espagnole sauce
Thickens and enriches the gravy, giving it a fuller, more concentrated flavor.
Butter
Added at the end to enrich the sauce and give it a glossy, smooth finish.

The step that matters

Reduce the gravy to the proper consistency. Reducing concentrates flavor and thickens the sauce by evaporating water. Too little reduction leaves it thin and watery; too much makes it overly salty and sticky, so check it as it thickens.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, sugar, veal, sauce, butter, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, veal, sauce, butter, 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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