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To Dress Cucumbers with Eggs

A cucumber salad cooked with ham, butter, veal gravy, and topped with poached eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Dress Cucumbers with Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare, quarter, and cut the cucumbers into dice-sized squares.

  2. Boil the cucumbers in water, then transfer them to a stewpan.

Stew

  1. Add the onion, ham, butter, and salt; cover and cook over low heat for 15 minutes, stirring often.

  2. Dredge a little flour over the cucumbers and add enough veal gravy to cover them.

  3. Stir well and maintain a gentle heat until no scum rises.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the ham and onion, then stir in the beaten egg yolks and cream for 1 minute.

  2. Remove from heat and add lemon juice just before serving.

  3. Top with poached eggs before serving.

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. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,319 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Cucumber + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 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
Form the bulk of the salad and soften gently into a moist, tender base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and gravy sauce as they cook, giving it body and richness.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the sauce and mellowing the lemon.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a silky mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its fat.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can curdle or scramble if the mixture boils. Keep the heat low and stir steadily, and remove from heat before adding lemon juice, which can also cause the sauce to split.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, ham, butter, flour, veal, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, ham, butter, flour, veal, 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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