Skip to main content
Main

Cucumbers, Stewed, with Onions

Stewed cucumbers cooked with onions in gravy, optionally finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cucumbers, Stewed, with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Prepare the cucumbers as in the previous recipe.

  2. Slice the onions and fry them with the cucumbers, being careful not to burn them.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew the cucumbers and onions in the gravy.

  2. If desired, add the yolks of two eggs to the sauce, but do not allow it to boil after adding.

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 + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,346 recipes

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

  3. Onion + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,333 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Onion and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,333 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 dish and soften as they stew, releasing moisture into the sauce.
Onions
Frying softens them and brings out sweetness, adding depth to the dish.
Gravy
Provides the liquid that cooks the vegetables and forms the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smoother, richer texture.

The step that matters

Do not boil the sauce after adding the yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but boiling makes them curdle and scramble, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes