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Scolloped Cucumbers, Foe Garniture

Sautéed cucumber halves cooked in clarified butter with lemon juice and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Scolloped Cucumbers, Foe Garniture

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the cucumbers, slice them in half, and remove the seeds.

  2. Parboil the cucumbers for 2 minutes, then immerse them in cold water and dry on a napkin.

Cook

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

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar, then cover and simmer until cooked without browning.

  3. Drain off the butter, add lemon juice and chopped parsley, and serve immediately.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender when simmered gently in butter.
Clarified butter
Carries the heat evenly and adds richness without the milk solids that would brown.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild, rich flavour of the butter and cucumbers.
Sugar
Adds a small amount of sweetness that balances the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Simmer covered without browning. Clarified butter has no milk solids, so it can get hot without scorching, but high heat or uncovered cooking can still brown the cucumbers and make them bitter. Gentle, covered simmering cooks them through while keeping them pale and delicate.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, sugar, lemon, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sugar, lemon, parsley. 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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