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To Stew Cucumbers

A dish of cucumbers simmered with onion, salt, pepper, broth or butter, finished with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Stew Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cucumbers thick or halve them lengthwise.

  2. Slice the onions.

  3. Cut the cucumbers large.

  4. Flour the cucumbers.

Stew

  1. Strew salt, pepper, and sliced onion over the cucumbers.

  2. Add broth or butter.

  3. Simmer slowly.

  4. If no butter was added, stir in butter and flour.

  5. If butter was used, add only flour.

  6. Fry them in butter.

  7. Pour in broth or gravy.

  8. Stew until cooked through.

  9. Skim off excess fat.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cucumber + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 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 dish, softening as they stew into a tender vegetable.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light gravy and helps the cucumbers hold together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for frying and gives the gravy a rounded flavor.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and sweetness as it cooks down into the stew.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, butter, flour. 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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