Skip to main content
Sauce

Sauce De Cornichons. — Cucumber Sauce.

A creamy cucumber sauce made with butter, cream, and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Cornichons. — Cucumber Sauce.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cucumbers thinly and drain the liquid.

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

Cook and finish

  1. Stew until soft enough to pass through a colander.

  2. Add cream, flour, and pepper.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes.

  4. Season with salt just 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
Form the bulk of the sauce and, once stewed, give it its fresh, mild flavour.
Onions
Soften during stewing and add savoury sweetness and aroma to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the vegetables soften gently without browning.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Boiling after the cream and flour go in. Once cream and flour are added, the sauce can scorch on the base of the pan or thicken unevenly. Keeping the heat moderate and stirring helps the flour disperse and the starch thicken the sauce smoothly.

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.

More cucumber sauce recipes

White 19for Fish 3 See all 106 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes