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Sauce

White Cucumber Sauce

A sauce made from cucumbers, butter, sugar, salt, white sauce, milk or broth, and liaison, served with meat or poultry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

White Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel the cucumbers and cut each lengthwise into four pieces, removing the seeds. Cut the cucumber into 1-inch long pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the cucumber pieces, sugar, and salt; let stew for 15 minutes.

  3. Stir in the white sauce and milk (or broth/water), and simmer gently while skimming.

  4. Add the liaison and serve under meat or over poultry.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and sauce 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
Provide the main vegetable body and fresh flavor that the sauce is built around.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor as the cucumber pieces cook gently in it.
White sauce
Forms the creamy base that gives the sauce its body and smooth texture.
Liaison
Thickens and enriches the sauce at the end so it coats the food.

The step that matters

Simmer gently while skimming. Boiling vigorously can break the emulsified white sauce and make it grainy or thin, so a gentle simmer keeps it smooth. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the sauce.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, sauce, milk. 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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