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Tojleiv Cucumbers Another Way

A dish of diced cucumbers and onions fried in butter, stewed in gravy, thickened with flour and water, flavored with walnut ketchup and chili powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 380 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Tojleiv Cucumbers Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and dice cucumbers into ½-inch pieces.

  2. Peel and dice a few onions, then place them on a sieve and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Let them drain.

Fry

  1. Dredge the cucumbers and onions in flour and fry in hot fresh butter until brown, being careful not to burn them.

  2. Drain the fried cucumbers and onions on a sieve.

Stew and season

  1. Stew them in good gravy for 30 minutes.

  2. Add a little butter, thicken with flour and water, and stir in a tablespoon of walnut ketchup.

  3. Season with chili powder and salt.

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 + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together380 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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
Forms the main body of the stew and softens into tender pieces as it cooks.
Onions
Adds savory depth and sweetness, and browns in the butter for extra flavor.
Flour
Coats the vegetables for browning and later thickens the gravy.
Fresh butter
Fat for frying that browns the vegetables and adds richness.
Good gravy
Liquid that cooks the vegetables and carries the flavor of the stew.
Walnut ketchup
Adds a dark, tangy, savory note to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Frying until brown without burning. Browning the floured vegetables builds deep flavor through the Maillard reaction, but scorched flour and butter turn bitter, so the heat must stay moderate and the pieces must be watched closely.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, butter, flour, walnut, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, butter, flour, walnut, ketchup. 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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