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Stewed Cucumbers

A cucumber stew cooked with butter, onion, flour, stock, and seasonings, served on toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Stewed Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and quarter the cucumbers, removing the seeds.

Make the sauce

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and add the sliced onion; fry until brown.

  2. Add the cucumbers and fry until light brown.

  3. Remove the cucumbers and add the flour to the pan, mixing until smooth.

  4. Pour in the stock or water, stirring continually, and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Return the cucumbers to the pan and stew gently for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the stewed cucumbers on toasted bread.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Cucumbers
Form the main body of the dish, softening into a tender, mild vegetable base as they stew.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onion and cucumbers, adding richness and browning flavour.
Onion
Browned in butter to add savoury, sweet depth to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce that clings to the cucumbers.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour smoothly into the pan. Flour added to hot fat must be mixed well before liquid goes in, or it clumps. Pouring in the stock while stirring continually keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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