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Cucumber with Parsley Sauce

A cucumber dish simmered in butter, shallot, white sauce, egg yolks, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cucumber with Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the cucumbers and place them in boiling water.

  2. Cook for about 10 minutes, then drain and cut into 1‑inch thick slices.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter and add the sliced cucumber and shallot.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, and toss over heat for a few minutes.

  3. Add the white sauce and heat until just before boiling.

  4. Stir in the egg yolks and parsley, cooking gently until the eggs thicken.

  5. Season to taste and serve.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Cucumber + shallottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together264 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they cook gently, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as the cucumber and shallot cook.
White sauce
Forms the creamy base of the dish and carries the cucumber.
Cucumbers
Provide the main vegetable and bulk of the dish.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but above roughly 70°C they can scramble and curdle. Keep the heat low and stir constantly so the sauce becomes smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, butter, egg, shallot, parsley, pepper):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, egg, shallot, parsley, pepper. 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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