Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Cucumbers

A savory dish of cucumbers simmered with butter, onion, flour, and stock, served on toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 stir in the flour until smooth.

  4. Pour in the stock or water, stirring continually; add salt and pepper to taste.

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

Serve

  1. Serve 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 tender pieces as they stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when stirred in with the butter and onion.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onion and cucumbers, adding richness and flavour.
Onion
Browns in the butter to add savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the stock or water. Adding liquid to the flour must be done gradually while stirring continually, otherwise the flour clumps and the sauce will not become smooth.

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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes