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Savoury Cucumber, Stuffed

Savory cucumber pieces are stuffed with a seasoned beef mixture, wrapped in bacon, stewed, and served with mashed potato border and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Savoury Cucumber, Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Scrape the green rind from the cucumbers and cut them into 3‑inch pieces.

  2. Remove the center of each piece with a round cutter.

Stuff and stew

  1. Mix the minced beef or veal, bread crumbs, eggs, salt, pepper, parsley, basil, and thyme to make the stuffing.

  2. Fill the cucumber pieces with the stuffing and cover the ends with bacon slices, tying them with string.

  3. Stew the stuffed cucumbers gently in a pan with a little stock until tender.

  4. Drain the cucumbers on a cloth and trim the ends.

Plate and sauce

  1. On a round dish, create a border with mashed potatoes and arrange the cucumbers in a crown or pyramid shape.

  2. Sauce the dish with reduced demi‑glace or brown sauce, adding chopped and blanched parsley and chervil.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Basil + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the edible shell that holds the stuffing and becomes tender when stewed.
Cooked beef or veal
Provides the main savory filling and body of the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing a softer, lighter texture.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds together when sliced and served.

The step that matters

Stew the stuffed cucumbers gently. Simmering gently keeps the cucumbers tender and intact. A hard boil can break the shells and dry out the filling, and the stuffing needs gentle heat to set without becoming tough.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, egg, pepper, parsley, basil, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, egg, pepper, parsley, basil, thyme. 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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