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Dessert

Cucumbers, Stuffed

A cucumber stuffed with forcemeat or sausage meat, simmered in white stock and topped with sauce velouté and white sauce, garnished with cucumber peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Cucumbers, Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove seeds from the cucumber and stuff it with forcemeat or sausage meat.

  2. Tie the cucumber and simmer in white stock until cooked through.

  3. Heat the meat in a jar over boiling water for a few minutes before using.

Serve

  1. Pour Sauce Velouté over the stuffed cucumber and add a little good white sauce around it.

  2. Sprinkle with finely chopped cucumber peel instead of parsley.

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).

  2. Meat + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,167 recipes
  3. Cucumber + meattop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 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

Cucumber
Forms the edible shell that holds the stuffing while it cooks.
Forcemeat or sausage meat
Provides the savoury filling that cooks through inside the cucumber.
Sauce velouté
Coats the cucumber with a thick, smooth sauce that masks its surface.

The step that matters

Simmering the tied cucumber in white stock. Cucumber is mostly water and softens quickly, so simmering gently until just cooked through keeps it intact. Boiling hard can break it apart and let the stuffing leak out.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sauce. 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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