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Dessert

Croustade De Concombres a LA Cordon Rouge

A cucumber croustade served with a béchamel and lemon sauce, topped with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Croustade De Concombres a LA Cordon Rouge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the croustade

  1. Cut the bread into a croustade shape, about three inches high.

  2. Fry the bread until golden.

Cook the cucumbers

  1. Peel the cucumbers and cut them into two-inch pieces.

  2. Scoop out the centers.

  3. Combine the cucumbers with butter, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and sugar in a stewpan.

  4. Add enough white stock to cover the cucumbers.

  5. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Dress the cucumbers in the croustade.

  2. Add béchamel sauce, lemon juice, and cream, and bring to a boil.

  3. Bind with the egg yolk.

  4. Strain over the dish and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  5. 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the fried golden case that holds the cucumbers.
Cucumbers
Make up the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender when simmered.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the cucumbers.
Béchamel sauce
Adds body and creaminess to the cucumber mixture.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce as it binds, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Binding with the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently but can curdle and turn grainy if the mixture boils hard. Keep the heat low and stir steadily once the yolk goes in.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, sauce, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, sauce, lemon. 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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