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Cucumbers a LA Poulette

A cucumber dish sautéed with butter, veal stock, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,564 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cucumbers a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel and slice cucumbers very thin or quarter them, removing seeds and cutting into half‑inch lengths.

  2. Soak cucumbers in vinegar and sprinkle with coarse sea salt for 30 minutes.

  3. Drain and press cucumbers dry with a soft cloth.

  4. Flour the cucumbers well.

Cook and finish the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat until it begins to boil.

  2. Add cucumbers and gently shake for 10 minutes, avoiding any color change.

  3. Gradually pour in enough veal stock or gravy to nearly cover the cucumbers.

  4. Once boiling, skim off any fat, then add salt and white pepper to taste.

  5. When cucumbers are tender, stir in minced parsley and thicken the sauce with 2 or 3 egg yolks.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the main body of the dish and soften into tender pieces during simmering.
Butter
Provides fat for gently cooking the cucumbers and adds rich flavour to the sauce.
Veal stock or gravy
Supplies the liquid that forms the savoury sauce around the cucumbers.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they gently heat, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the cucumbers after soaking.

The step that matters

Thickening with egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, but if the sauce boils after adding them they can curdle and turn grainy. Remove from heat or keep it barely warm before stirring them in.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, butter, veal, parsley, egg):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, butter, veal, parsley, 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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