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Ragout of Cucumbers

A sautéed cucumber and onion ragout thickened with flour and seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ragout of Cucumbers

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cucumbers into bite-sized pieces and peel them.

Cook

  1. Fry the cucumbers and onion rings in dripping until browned.

  2. Add stock, pepper, and salt to the pan.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot.

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

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 ragout and soften into tender pieces as they cook.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it browns in the fat.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce that clings to the vegetables.
Stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury flavour for the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the cucumbers and onion rings in dripping until browned. Cucumbers hold a lot of water. Browning them in hot fat drives off surface moisture and builds flavour through the Maillard reaction, so the stew does not turn watery when the stock is added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, flour. 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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