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Dessert

Cucumber Pie

A savory pie with sliced cucumbers and onions, covered in a buttered pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Peel and slice the cucumbers and onions.

  3. In a pie dish, layer the cucumbers and onions with butter and seasoning alternately.

Make the pastry and bake

  1. Prepare the pastry by rubbing the butter into the flour, then add baking powder and salt.

  2. Add just enough water to form a dough that can be rolled out.

  3. Cover the layered vegetables with the pastry, brush with egg yolk, and bake until golden.

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

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

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

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

  3. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cucumber + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the pastry once mixed with butter and water.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to make the pastry tender and flaky, and adds richness to the layers.
Cucumbers
Make up the bulk of the filling and contribute moisture as they cook.
Onions
Add savory flavor to the filling alongside the cucumbers.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough to help it rise and lighten as it bakes.

The step that matters

Add just enough water to form the dough. Too much water makes the pastry sticky and tough, while too little leaves it crumbly and hard to roll. Gluten development in the flour is what gives the crust its structure, so the dough should be firm enough to roll out cleanly.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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