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Sauce De Cob Nichons— Cucumber Sauce

A creamy cucumber sauce made with cucumbers, onions, butter, heavy cream, flour, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sauce De Cob Nichons— Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and soften

  1. Slice the cucumbers thinly and drain the liquid.

  2. In a casserole, combine the cucumbers, onions, and butter.

  3. Cook until the mixture is soft enough to pass through a colander.

Thicken and season

  1. Stir in the cream, flour, and pepper.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes, then add salt 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  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
Provide the main vegetable body and moisture that the sauce is built from.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and body as they soften with the cucumbers.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps soften the vegetables without browning them.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream so the sauce becomes body rather than watery.

The step that matters

Boiling after adding the flour. Flour thickens the cream only when it is stirred in well and boiled, and boiling also cooks out its raw taste. Stirring constantly helps prevent lumps and scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, cream, 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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