Skip to main content
Salad

Cucumbers, a LA Roulette

A cucumber salad with butter, nutmeg, sugar, velouté sauce, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Cucumbers, a LA Roulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Cut the cucumbers into scallops about 1 inch in diameter.

  2. In a basin, combine cucumbers with salt and vinegar; let steep for several hours.

  3. Drain the moisture from the cucumbers and place them in a saucepan with butter, nutmeg, and sugar.

Cook and finish

  1. Simmer gently over low heat for about 30 minutes until tender.

  2. Pour off the butter and add Velouté sauce; simmer for a few minutes.

  3. Incorporate the egg yolks into the mixture 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. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Cucumber + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together432 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Provide the main body of the salad, becoming tender as they simmer.
Egg yolks
Added at the end to enrich and thicken the sauce through gentle heat-setting.
Butter
Carries the nutmeg and sugar flavours and adds richness during the simmer.
Velouté sauce
Forms the body of the sauce that the cucumbers and yolks are finished in.

The step that matters

Incorporate the egg yolks. Yolks thicken through gentle heat-setting; if the mixture is too hot when they are added, they can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat low and stir steadily.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, butter, sugar, sauce, egg. 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

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes