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Cucumber Sauce

A chilled cucumber sauce made with mayonnaise, whipped cream, and tarragon vinegar, served with salmon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 274 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumber

  1. Cut the cucumber into dice.

  2. Cook in a little salted water until tender.

  3. Rub through a fine sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. When cold, add to the mayonnaise sauce and whipped cream.

  2. Color with a few drops of sap green for a faint tinge.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with hot or cold salmon.

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 + tarragontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 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

Cucumber
Cooked and sieved, it gives the sauce its body and pale, fresh flavor.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a smooth, airy texture to the sauce.
Mayonnaise sauce
Provides the fat and emulsified base that carries the sauce's richness.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and a sharp herbal aroma that balances the rich base.

The step that matters

Rub through a fine sieve. Cooked cucumber holds a lot of water and fibrous bits. Pressing it through a fine sieve makes a smooth purée, so the sauce does not turn watery or grainy when mixed with the cream and mayonnaise.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sauce, tarragon, vinegar, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sauce, tarragon, vinegar, sugar. 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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