Skip to main content
Main

Cucumbers a LA Poulette

A French cucumber dish simmered in butter, broth, and egg yolks, flavored with salt, vinegar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers evenly, then soak them in a mixture of salt and vinegar for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the cucumbers using a cloth and place them in a saucepan with the butter.

  3. Fry the cucumbers over medium heat without browning them, then sprinkle with flour.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the broth and skim off any fat that rises to the surface.

  2. Simmer gently until the sauce reduces, ensuring the cucumbers remain intact.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks, parsley, sugar, and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Bring to a boil 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. Parsley + peppertop 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 + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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, which softens and absorbs the sauce as it simmers.
Butter
Fats the pan for frying and carries flavour through the cucumbers.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the cucumbers cook in.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a creamy texture when heated gently.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if the sauce boils after they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat low once they are stirred in.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, butter, flour, parsley, sugar, egg, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, flour, parsley, sugar, egg, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes