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Cucumber Sauce

A chilled cucumber sauce made with whipped cream, onion juice, parsley, tarragon vinegar, salt, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the cucumber finely.

  2. In a bowl, combine the cucumber, salt, black pepper, onion juice, chopped parsley, tarragon vinegar, and whipped cream, then mix well until combined.

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. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + tarragontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumber
Provides the fresh, watery bulk and mild flavour of the sauce.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and a light, airy body that makes the sauce creamy and smooth.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the cream.
Onion juice
Adds a pungent aromatic note that gives the sauce savoury depth.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream gently. Whipped cream holds air in a fragile network of fat globules. Overmixing can deflate it or turn it grainy, leaving the sauce thin or dense. Mix only until the ingredients are evenly combined.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cream, parsley, pepper, tarragon, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cream, parsley, pepper, tarragon, vinegar. 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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