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Stuffed Cucumbers, Turkish Style

A Turkish-style dish of cucumbers filled with lamb, beef suet, rice, herbs, and egg yolks, baked and served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 896 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stuffed Cucumbers, Turkish Style

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Prepare the cucumbers by hollowing them out.

  2. In a pan, combine the lamb, beef suet, fine herbs, and cooked rice. Season the mixture with salt, nutmeg, and red pepper. Heat the mixture while adding the egg yolks until well combined.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the cucumbers with the filling and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Place the stuffed cucumbers in a buttered baking pan and top each with a piece of butter. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until nicely browned.

Serve

  1. Serve with reduced plain tomato 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. Lamb + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Cucumber + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together734 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the filling so it holds together and sets lightly when heated.
Lamb
Provides the rich, savoury meat base of the stuffing.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and flavourful during baking.
Cooked rice
Adds body to the filling and absorbs juices as it cooks.
Fresh bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned crust on top of the stuffed cucumbers.

The step that matters

Heat the filling while adding the egg yolks. Adding yolks to hot meat can scramble them unevenly; adding them gradually while stirring over gentle heat lets them thicken and bind the filling smoothly.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, beef, rice, nutmeg, pepper, egg, bread):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, beef, rice, nutmeg, pepper, egg, 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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