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Stuffed Cucumbers

Cucumbers stuffed with bread crumbs, minced meat, herbs, and cooked in a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Stuffed Cucumbers

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off one end of each cucumber and scoop out the seeds with a fork.

  2. Pare the cucumbers and prepare the stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, minced meat, salt, pepper, and sweet herbs.

  3. Fill the cucumbers with the stuffing and fasten the cut ends with skewers.

  4. Wrap each cucumber in a thin cloth and place them in a pan.

Stew and serve

  1. Add butter, flour, a bunch of sweet herbs, and warm water to the pan.

  2. Stew the cucumbers very slowly for about two hours.

  3. Remove the cloths and serve the cucumbers with the sauce underneath.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Bread crumbs
Bind the minced meat stuffing and soak up juices so it holds its shape.
Minced meat
Supplies the savoury filling that the cucumbers are stuffed with.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce that forms in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as it stews.

The step that matters

Stew the cucumbers very slowly for about two hours. Low, slow heat lets the cucumbers soften and the filling cook through without the liquid boiling hard and breaking the sauce or toughening the meat.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, meat, pepper, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, meat, pepper, butter, flour. 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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