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Stuffed Cucumbers

Stuffed cucumbers with a savory mixture of onion, cabbage, radish, apples, breadcrumbs, herbs, and egg, baked after steaming.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Stuffed Cucumbers

Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Stuffed Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel the cucumbers and remove the seed centers.

  2. Fill the cucumbers with stuffing and bind the halves together with tape.

Steam

  1. Steam the cucumbers until tender.

  2. Remove all tapes except the one in the middle.

Bake

  1. Place the cucumbers in a baking dish and brush with egg.

  2. Sprinkle with fine bread crumbs and brown in the oven.

Make the stuffing

  1. For the stuffing, fry the onion, savoy cabbages, and radishes in melted butter until brown.

  2. Drain the mixture, combine with chopped apples, bread crumbs, herbs, and whipped egg, and season to taste.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cabbage + radishtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together106 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 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 shell that holds the stuffing and softens into tender halves when steamed.
Savoy cabbages
Add bulk and body to the stuffing, with a mild, slightly sweet flavor once browned.
Apples
Add moisture and natural sweetness that contrast with the savory onion and cabbage.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the filling and give the stuffing and topping body and structure.
Egg
Binds the stuffing together and sets during baking to help the glaze brown.
Melted butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the onion, cabbage, and radishes brown.

The step that matters

Steam until just tender. Cucumbers are mostly water and soften quickly with heat. Steaming them only until tender keeps their shape and prevents them from turning mushy and collapsing around the stuffing.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, butter, onion, cabbage, radish, bread, egg):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, butter, onion, cabbage, radish, bread, egg. 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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