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Stuffed Cucumbers, Spanish Style

Stuffed cucumbers filled with chicken meat and herbs, baked with pork fat and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Stuffed Cucumbers, Spanish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare the cucumbers and slice them in half.

  2. Scoop out the seeds and parboil the cucumbers for 2 minutes.

  3. Immerse them in cold water and drain on a napkin.

Stuff and braise

  1. Stuff the cucumbers with the forced meat and cooked fine herbs.

  2. Arrange the cucumbers in a deep, flat saucepan lined with thin slices of fat pork.

  3. Moisten with clear Espagnole sauce or veal gravy.

  4. Cover each cucumber with a thin slice of fat pork.

  5. Cover the saucepan and cook in the oven, basting occasionally.

  6. When nicely glazed, dish them up and serve with reduced Madeira wine sauce.

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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Meat + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Cucumber + chickentop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Sauce + madeira winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together230 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 dish, becoming tender when parboiled and then braised.
Forced meat made from chicken breasts
Provides a moist, savoury filling that sets as it cooks inside the cucumber halves.
Thin slices of fat pork
Lines and covers the cucumbers, adding fat that keeps them moist and flavourful during cooking.
Clear espagnole sauce or veal gravy
Moistens the dish and adds savoury depth to the cooking liquid.
Reduced madeira wine sauce
Adds a rich, slightly sweet, aromatic finish served alongside the glazed cucumbers.

The step that matters

Basting during the covered oven cooking. Basting keeps the surfaces moist and helps the sauce and fat form an even glaze rather than drying out. Covering the pan traps steam so the cucumbers soften through while the top browns gently.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, chicken, pork, sauce, madeira wine):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, pork, sauce, madeira wine. 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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