Why it works: Cucumber and cream work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 787 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓
Cucumbers a LA Creme
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the cucumbers
Boil the cucumbers in salted water until tender, then drain them well.
Finish in cream
Stew the cucumbers in thick cream for a few minutes.
Serve the cucumbers in the cream.
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.
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Cucumber + creamtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together787 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cucumbers
- Main vegetable, softened by boiling until tender and then gently cooked in the cream.
- Thick cream
- Adds richness and moisture, coating the cucumbers and forming the sauce they are served in.
The step that matters
Stew the cucumbers in cream for a few minutes. Cream can separate or turn grainy if it boils hard or cooks too long, so it should stay at a gentle simmer. Draining the cucumbers well first keeps extra water from thinning the cream.
“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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