Skip to main content
Main

Cucumbers a LA Poulette

A cooked cucumber dish simmered in veal stock, butter, flour, and egg yolks, finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,564 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cucumbers a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers very thin, or quarter and remove seeds, cutting into half-inch lengths.

  2. Soak cucumbers in vinegar and sprinkle with salt for 30 minutes.

  3. Drain and press dry with a soft cloth.

Cook and finish the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter over medium heat, then add the cucumbers and cook for 10 minutes without browning.

  2. Gradually add veal stock until cucumbers are nearly covered, then bring to a boil.

  3. Skim off any fat, season with salt and white pepper, and cook until cucumbers are tender.

  4. Stir in minced parsley and thicken the sauce with egg yolks.

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 + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cucumber + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Make up the main body of the dish and soften into tender pieces during cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as the cucumbers cook gently in the pan.
Veal stock
Provides the liquid that cooks the cucumbers and forms the base of the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a smooth, rich texture when gently heated.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with starch, giving body to the liquid.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat and can scramble if the sauce boils. Remove the pan from direct heat before whisking them in, and keep the sauce below a simmer.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, flour, butter, veal, parsley, 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

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes