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Fide of Pickled Cucumbers

A stew of chopped pickled cucumbers in veal gravy with lemon and browning, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fide of Pickled Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped pickled cucumbers, veal gravy, lemon juice, and browning.

  2. Stew gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Before finishing, thicken the mixture with flour and butter.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish and pour the gravy over the cucumbers.

  2. Garnish with boiled celery or oyster patties and barberries or 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Cucumber + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,745 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Pickled cucumbers
Provide the main body and sharp, tangy flavor of the stew.
Veal gravy
Supplies the liquid base and savory meaty flavor of the stew.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances its flavor.
Browning
Adds color and a deeper, caramelized flavor to the gravy.
Flour and butter
Thicken the gravy, giving it body and a smooth, coating texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked in fat and stirred into the hot liquid to avoid lumps and raw flour taste, and the sauce thickens as starch gelatinizes with heat.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lemon, flour, butter, celery, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, flour, butter, celery, parsley. 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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