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Cucumber Sauce for Fish

A chilled cucumber sauce with pepper, onion, salt, vinegar, and heavy cream, served with fish.

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 ↓

Cucumber Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumber

  1. Pare and grate the cucumbers using a sieve.

  2. Drain the pulp thoroughly.

Make the sauce

  1. Transfer the drained pulp to a bowl.

  2. Add pepper, grated onion, salt, and vinegar to the bowl, then mix well.

  3. Stir in the whipped cream 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. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 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. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the bulk of the sauce and its fresh, watery base.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the cream.
Onion
Adds sharp aromatic flavour that complements the cucumber.

The step that matters

Drain the pulp thoroughly. Cucumber is mostly water. Excess liquid left in the pulp would thin the sauce and dilute the cream and flavourings, so draining well keeps the sauce thick and well seasoned.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, vinegar, cream. 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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