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White Cucumber Sauce

A light sauce made from cucumbers, butter, sugar, salt, white sauce, milk, and liaison, served with meat or poultry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

White Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel the cucumbers and cut them lengthwise into four pieces, removing the seeds.

  2. Cut the cucumber pieces into 1‑inch long pieces.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Add the cucumber pieces, sugar, and salt, and let them stew for 15 minutes.

  3. Stir in the white sauce and milk (or broth or water), and simmer gently while skimming off any foam.

  4. Add the liaison and serve under meat or over poultry.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Cucumbers
Provide the bulk of the sauce and its fresh, mild flavour and moisture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour as the cucumbers stew.
White sauce
Forms the creamy base that gives the sauce body and a smooth texture.
Liaison
Thickens and enriches the sauce so it coats the meat or poultry.

The step that matters

Simmer gently while skimming foam. Gentle heat keeps the white sauce and milk from scorching, curdling or breaking, and skimming removes foam so the sauce stays smooth and clean-tasting.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, sauce, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, sauce, milk. 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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