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Modern Cookery

A sauce made from cooked cucumbers, parsley, egg yolks, flour, and butter, seasoned with salt and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the cucumbers until tender.

  2. Stir in the finely-minced parsley.

  3. In a separate pot, add flour after the vegetables have stewed in butter.

  4. Thicken the sauce with the yolks of 2 or 3 eggs.

  5. Add salt and white pepper to taste.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cucumber + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Flour and butter 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
Provide the bulk and moisture of the sauce, softening into a tender base when cooked.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as their proteins set with gentle heat, and add richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and gelatinizes when heated in liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel, and carries flavor through the vegetables.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma that brightens the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with the egg yolks. Egg yolks set at a fairly low temperature and curdle if they get too hot or are added to boiling liquid. Keep the heat gentle and stir constantly so the sauce thickens smoothly rather than turning grainy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, parsley, egg, flour, butter. 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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