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Another Ragout of Cucumbers

A cucumber ragout simmered with butter, flour, broth, egg yolks, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Another Ragout of Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the cucumbers and remove the insides, then cut them into pieces.

  2. Lay the pieces in a dish with vinegar and salt for 2 hours, turning them frequently.

  3. Press the cucumbers dry in a cloth and place them in a saucepan with butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Shake them over the fire, then add a pinch of flour and moisten with vegetable broth.

  2. Let them simmer on low heat until cooked, then stir in the egg yolks and a little milk.

  3. Heat again, but do not boil, then 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 dish and supply its fresh, watery texture once cooked.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body when heated gently.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the cucumbers brown lightly.
Flour
Lightly thickens the cooking liquid so the broth clings to the cucumbers.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and firms the cucumber pieces during soaking.

The step that matters

Heat again, but do not boil. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and curdle or turn grainy if they boil, so the sauce must be warmed only until it is hot.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, butter, flour, egg, milk):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, flour, egg, milk. 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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