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Escalloped Cucumbers

A baked cucumber dish with bread crumbs, peanut butter, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Escalloped Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Slice the cucumbers and cook them in boiling water until tender.

  2. Press the cooked cucumbers through a colander or sieve.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix in enough white bread crumbs to achieve a pudding-like consistency.

  2. Add salt. Add dissolved peanut butter in water. Add the beaten egg.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

  2. Bake until the custard is set but not browned or dry.

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

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

  2. Cucumber + peanuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together219 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + peanuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Peanut + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,754 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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 provide its moist, tender body once cooked and pressed.
White bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the pressed cucumber into a pudding-like consistency.
Egg
Binds the mixture and sets during baking to form a custard.
Raw peanut butter
Adds richness and nutty flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. The egg sets the custard as it heats; baking too long dries it out and browns the surface, while underbaking leaves it loose and watery.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, peanut, butter, 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.

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