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Cucumber Sauce

A cucumber sauce made with cucumbers, onions, vinegar, water, salt, pepper, gravy stock, cullis, lemon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and quarter the cucumbers, removing the seeds.

  2. Cut each piece into three smaller pieces and pare them.

  3. Soak the onions in vinegar and water for 2 hours.

  4. Season the cucumbers and onions with salt and pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. Drain the liquid and add enough gravy stock to cover the vegetables.

  2. Boil until it thickens to a jelly.

  3. Stir in cullis to taste and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Squeeze in the lemon juice and add a little sugar.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 bulk of the sauce, releasing moisture and body as they cook down.
Onions
Add savory depth and aromatic flavor to the sauce base.
Gravy stock
Provides the liquid that cooks down with the vegetables into a thickened, savory base.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Boil until it thickens to a jelly. Cucumbers release a lot of water as they cook, so the sauce needs enough time at a steady boil to reduce and thicken. Stopping early leaves it thin, while overcooking can make it too stiff.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, pepper, lemon, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, pepper, lemon, sugar. 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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