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Cucumbers and Onions

A sautéed mixture of cucumbers, onions, parsley, and butter, finished with optional gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cucumbers and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and split the cucumbers, remove the seeds, and chop them into small pieces.

  2. Chop the onion and add it to the cucumbers along with the parsley.

Cook

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour, salt, and pepper to the vegetables and mix well.

  3. Once the butter is melted, add the vegetables to the stewpan and cook until very tender.

  4. If desired, add the gravy when the vegetables are nearly done.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the dish and give it a soft, moist texture as they cook down.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the butter.
Flour
Thickens the cooking juices from the vegetables, giving the dish a light body.
Butter
Provides fat for sautéing, carrying flavor and helping the vegetables brown lightly.

The step that matters

Cook until very tender. Cucumbers are mostly water and can stay watery and bland if undercooked. Cooking them long enough lets moisture evaporate and the flour thicken the juices into a cohesive sauce.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, butter, flour, pepper. 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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