Skip to main content
Main

White Cucumber Sauce

A sauce made from boiled cucumbers mixed with béchamel or thick white sauce, veal gravy, egg yolks, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

White Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Quarter the cucumbers and remove the seeds and rinds.

  2. Cut the cucumbers into 1-inch lengths.

  3. Boil the cucumbers in salted water for 15 to 18 minutes.

  4. Press the water from the cucumbers using the back of a spoon and sieve them.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the sieved cucumbers with a few spoonfuls of béchamel or thick white sauce.

  2. For a better flavor, boil cucumbers in well-seasoned veal gravy.

  3. Stir in the beaten yolks of 2 or 3 eggs and a little chili vinegar or lemon juice just before serving.

  4. Do not boil again; serve very hot.

Alternative method

  1. Alternatively, slice cucumbers and stew them in butter without browning.

  2. Boil in pale veal gravy thickened with rich cream and add a morsel of 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, providing the main flavor and soft texture once cooked and sieved.
Béchamel or thick white sauce
Thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth, creamy body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and thicken it gently when stirred in without boiling.
Veal gravy
Adds savoury depth to the cucumbers as they cook.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the veal gravy.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat. If the sauce boils after the yolks are added, they can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, veal, egg, vinegar, butter, cream, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, veal, egg, vinegar, butter, cream, 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.

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes