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Sauce

White Cucumber Sauce

A sauce made from boiled cucumbers mixed with bechamel, veal gravy, egg yolks, vinegar, butter, cream, and a touch of sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

White Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Quarter the cucumbers and remove the seeds and rinds, then cut them into 1-inch lengths.

  2. Boil the cucumber pieces in salted water for 15 to 18 minutes.

  3. Squeeze the boiled cucumbers and work the mixture through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the cucumber puree with bechamel or thick white sauce, and do not let it boil again.

  2. Stir in beaten egg yolks and vinegar or lemon juice just before serving.

  3. Add a morsel of sugar.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce very hot.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body and fresh flavour of the sauce once pureed.
Bechamel or thick white sauce
Gives the sauce body and a smooth, thickened texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and add richness and body when stirred in.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour in the alternative stewed method.
Rich cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the veal gravy in the alternative method.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can scramble or curdle if the sauce boils, so the sauce must not boil again after the yolks are added.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, veal, egg, vinegar, butter, cream, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, veal, egg, vinegar, butter, cream, sugar. 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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