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Dressed Cucumbers

Cucumbers fried in butter, topped with a creamy parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Dressed Cucumbers

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 ↓

Dressed Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the cucumbers

  1. Slice and fry the cucumbers in butter until golden brown.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and cream together.

  2. Add parsley, vinegar, pepper, salt, sugar, and flour; stir until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in egg yolks.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fried cucumbers 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.

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. 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the main body of the dish, softened and browned by frying in butter.
Butter
Fat for frying the cucumbers and enriching the sauce, adding richness and browning.
Cream
Gives the sauce body and a smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and cream.
Egg yolks
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy finish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Removing the pan from the heat before stirring them in keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

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