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Another Way to Stew Cucumbers

A stew of cucumbers simmered in a ham and onion gravy, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Another Way to Stew Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel the cucumbers and soak them in vinegar and water with salt for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the cucumbers and place them in a saucepan.

Stew

  1. Add gravy, ham, onion, parsley, and thyme to the saucepan.

  2. Cover and stew until the cucumbers are tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. Remove the cucumbers and strain the gravy.

  2. Thicken the gravy by mixing butter and flour, then boil it.

  3. Pour the thickened gravy over the cucumbers before serving.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Become tender through slow stewing, forming the body of the dish.
Gravy
Provides the liquid base for stewing and the savoury sauce served over the cucumbers.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and adds richness and flavour when combined with flour.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy into a coating sauce when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy by mixing butter and flour, then boil it. Flour must be cooked with the butter and liquid long enough to swell its starch and thicken evenly; adding it raw or unevenly leaves lumps and a floury taste.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, ham, onion, clove, parsley, thyme, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, ham, onion, clove, parsley, thyme, butter. 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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