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Stuffed Cucumbers

Cucumbers are hollowed, filled with a mixture of cucumber, bread crumbs, spices, nuts, and egg white, then simmered.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Stuffed Cucumbers

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare the cucumbers and cut them in half.

  2. Hollow out the centers and soak in cold water for 30 minutes.

Stuff and cook

  1. In a bowl, mix the scooped-out cucumber with bread crumbs, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Stuff the mixture back into the cucumber shells and place small pieces of butter on top.

  3. Place the stuffed cucumbers in a dish with a little water or stock.

  4. Simmer for about 40 minutes or until browned.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Cucumber + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together432 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + nutstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the top brown during cooking.
Egg white
Binds the stuffing together and helps it set as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer for about 40 minutes or until browned. Cucumber is mostly water and can turn soft and watery if overcooked. Simmering gently in a little liquid cooks the stuffing through while keeping the shells intact, and browning at the end depends on the butter on top.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, bread, pepper, nutmeg, butter, egg):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, bread, pepper, nutmeg, butter, 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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