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Salad

Cucumbers As a Vegetable

A salad of sliced cucumbers served with a cold butter sauce flavored with parsley, chives, lemon juice, and cayenne or paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Cucumbers As a Vegetable

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel and cut cucumbers into strips.

  2. Soak cucumbers in salted ice water for a few moments, then drain.

  3. Boil cucumbers in salted boiling water for 10 to 15 minutes, or until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream the butter until very creamy.

  2. Add parsley, chives, lemon juice, and cayenne or paprika to the butter and mix well.

  3. Chill the sauce on ice until needed.

Serve

  1. Serve the cucumbers covered with the cold sauce.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together244 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  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

Cucumbers
Provide the main vegetable body, becoming tender and mild when boiled.
Butter
Forms the rich, creamy fat base that carries the sauce's flavour and texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter sauce.

The step that matters

Chill the sauce on ice until needed. Butter is a fat that softens quickly at room temperature and can separate or turn greasy. Keeping the sauce cold holds its emulsion and thick, creamy texture until it is served over the warm cucumbers.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, chive, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, chive, lemon. 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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