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Salad

Cucumbers, with Cream Sauce

A cucumber salad cooked with butter, vinegar, and cream sauce, seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cucumbers, with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and halve the cucumbers, then scoop out the seeds.

  2. Cut them into evenly sized scallops and place in a bowl with cold water, salt, and vinegar for 30 minutes.

  3. Drain and dry the cucumbers on a napkin.

Cook and serve

  1. In a flat saucepan, melt the butter and add the cucumbers.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar, then cover and cook on moderate heat until tender.

  3. Drain off the butter and stir in the cream sauce gently.

  4. Serve with chopped parsley sprinkled on top.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 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
Form the main body of the salad and, once cooked until tender, give it a soft texture.
Butter
Melts to cook the cucumbers gently and adds a rich, savoury flavour.
Cream sauce
Adds richness and creaminess, coating the cooked cucumbers.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the cucumbers.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the acidity and salt.

The step that matters

Drying the cucumbers before cooking. Cucumbers hold a lot of water. If they stay wet, they release liquid into the butter and steam rather than cook, so the dish turns watery and loses flavour. Drying them well helps them soften in the fat.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, cream, sauce. 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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