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Dessert

Sauce Creme De Concombres

A creamy cucumber sauce made with cucumber puree, stock, milk, butter, flour, onion, carrot, bay leaf, peppercorns, parsley, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sauce Creme De Concombres

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumber

  1. Peel cucumber thinly, cut into pieces, and place in a saucepan.

  2. Cover with water, add salt, and boil until tender.

  3. Strain the water and rub cucumber through a fine sieve back into the saucepan.

  4. Moisten with white stock and simmer to reduce.

Make the sauce base

  1. In another saucepan, melt butter, then add sliced onion, carrot, bay leaf, peppercorns, and parsley.

  2. Fry for 4 minutes, stir in flour, and cook for a few seconds without coloring.

  3. Boil milk and gently stir into mixture.

  4. Add more milk or hot stock if sauce is too thick.

  5. Simmer for 15 minutes, skim, and strain through a fine strainer.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix half of sauce with cucumber puree, season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Just before serving, stir in whipped cream, whisk well, and do not allow to boil.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Cucumber + carrottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumber
Forms the main flavour and, when pureed, gives the sauce its body and pale green colour.
Butter
Carries flavour from the aromatics and forms the fat base for the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling with the milk and stock as it cooks.
Milk
Adds creaminess and moisture, rounding out the thickened base.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, silky texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Do not let the sauce boil after adding the whipped cream. Cream can split or curdle when overheated, and boiling also breaks up its airy whipped texture, so it should be warmed gently and whisked just before serving.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, onion, carrot, parsley, cream. 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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