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Cucumbers

Thinly sliced cucumber fried in butter and served with a veal gravy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumber

  1. Peel and thinly slice the cucumber.

  2. Soak the slices in cold spring water for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the slices on a napkin for 1 minute.

  4. In a dish, combine the cucumber with oil, vinegar, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and a little coarse sea salt.

  5. For a fried version, soak cucumber slices in vinegar and salt for 30 minutes.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Dry the slices with a napkin and fry them in butter until lightly browned.

  2. Remove the fried slices and let them drain.

  3. In the remaining butter, add flour and mix well.

  4. Moisten the mixture with veal gravy and stir in the egg yolk.

  5. Season the sauce and pour it over the fried cucumber slices.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 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. Cucumber + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Cucumber
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the dressing or frying.
Butter
Fries the slices to light browning and forms the base of the roux-style sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Veal gravy
Provides the liquid and savoury flavour of the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce, adding richness and body as it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Frying the cucumber slices. Slices must be fully dried before frying, since surface water turns to steam and stops them browning, leaving them soft and greasy.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, 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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