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Cucumbers, to Stew

A stew of cucumbers and onions cooked in butter with gravy, white wine, mace, flour, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Cucumbers, to Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice equal quantities of cucumbers and onions.

  2. Fry them together in butter.

  3. Strain in a sieve and transfer to a saucepan.

Stew and thicken

  1. Add gravy, white wine, and mace.

  2. Stew for 5-6 minutes.

  3. Incorporate a piece of butter rolled in flour, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Shake until thickened, then dish 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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 stew and give it its fresh, mild body.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they soften and brown in butter.
Butter
Carries the frying flavour and, rolled with flour, enriches and thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when rolled into butter and stirred in at the end.
Gravy
Supplies the savoury liquid base of the stew.

The step that matters

Incorporate the butter and flour. Flour mixed into butter, added to a simmering liquid, thickens it smoothly; if added straight in or not simmered long enough, lumps form and the sauce stays thin.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, butter, white wine, flour, 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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