Skip to main content
Main

Deviled Cucumbers

A dish of fried cucumbers topped with a hot tomato mustard sauce.

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

Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Deviled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the cucumbers as you would for Fried Cucumbers.

  2. Once cooked, place them on a heated platter.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the tomato juice, salt, mustard, sugar, cayenne, onion juice, salad oil, and lemon juice.

  2. Heat the mixture until scalding, then pour it over the cucumbers.

  3. Serve immediately.

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 + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 and soften into a tender base when fried.
Tomato juice
Provides the liquid base and tangy flavour of the sauce.
Salad oil
Adds fat to the sauce, giving it a smoother, richer mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce until scalding, then pour it over the cucumbers. The sauce must be hot enough to warm the fried cucumbers and blend its flavours, but it should not boil hard, since overheating can make the oil separate and the tomato juice taste flat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, mustard, sugar, pepper, lemon):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, mustard, sugar, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes