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Cucumber Sauce

A pickled cucumber sauce with onion, vinegar, brown stock, brown sauce, lemon juice, sugar, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel the cucumbers and cut them into 2‑inch lengths, then cut each length into 4 pieces, removing the seeds.

  2. Place the cucumber pieces in a basin of vinegar and water, adding pepper and salt.

  3. Let them soak for 15 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Drain the cucumbers and place them in a saucepan with the onion and brown stock.

  2. Boil until nearly dry.

  3. Add brown sauce, lemon juice, vinegar, sugar, pepper, and salt. Stir to combine.

  4. For a white sauce, add cream.

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

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

  2. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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 sauce and give it a fresh, watery body that reduces as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness and richness of the sauce.
Brown sauce
Contributes savoury depth and colour to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the sauce.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the vinegar and lemon for a rounder flavour.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, lightening the colour and softening the texture for a white sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until nearly dry. Cucumbers hold a lot of water. Boiling them down concentrates their flavour and thickens the sauce; if they are left too wet, the sauce stays thin and watery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, pepper, sauce, lemon, sugar, cream):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, pepper, sauce, lemon, sugar, cream. 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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