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Sauce

White Cucumber Sauce

A sauce made from boiled cucumbers mixed with bechamel sauce, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,174 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

White Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Quarter the cucumbers and remove the seeds and rinds.

  2. Cut the cucumbers into 1-inch lengths.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil the cucumbers in salted water for 15 to 18 minutes.

  2. Squeeze and strain the cucumbers through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the strained cucumbers with a few tablespoons of bechamel sauce. Do not boil again.

  2. Serve hot.

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 + saucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Young cucumbers
Provide the main vegetable body and mild, fresh flavour of the sauce.
Bechamel sauce or thick white sauce
Adds creamy body and richness that carries the cucumber pieces.

The step that matters

Do not boil again after mixing with the bechamel. Boiling a flour-thickened white sauce can break its emulsion and make it grainy or thin, and reheating can cause the cucumber to release more water and loosen the sauce.

“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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