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Stewed Cucumbers

A simple dish of cucumbers stewed in butter, seasoned with salt and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,564 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Stewed Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers.

  2. Melt butter in a pan over medium heat.

  3. Add the cucumbers and cook until tender.

  4. Season with salt and sprinkle with chopped parsley 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. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,185 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Soften as they cook, becoming tender and releasing moisture that forms the stewing liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and helping the cucumbers brown lightly in the pan.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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