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Stewed Cucumbers

A dish of cucumbers stewed in cream, butter, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Cut the cucumbers into ½ inch thick slices.

  2. Place them in a saucepan and cover with hot water.

  3. Boil slowly for 30 minutes or until tender, then drain.

Finish in the cream

  1. In a saucepan, heat the cream and butter until warm.

  2. Add the cucumbers, season with salt and white pepper.

  3. Cook for 5 minutes, shaking the saucepan continuously.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cucumber + white peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cucumber + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,185 recipes

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

  4. Cream + white peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes
  5. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main bulk and tender texture once boiled until soft.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce around the cucumbers.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded flavour to the cream.

The step that matters

Cooking the cucumbers until tender before adding the cream. Cucumbers are mostly water and stay firm if undercooked, so boiling them fully softens the cell structure. Draining well also matters, since excess water thins the cream when they are combined.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, white 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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