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Sauce

White Cucumber Sauce

A sauce made from boiled cucumbers, salt, and optional béchamel, veal gravy, egg yolks, vinegar or lemon juice, butter, cream, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

White Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Quarter the cucumbers and remove the seeds and rinds.

  2. Cut them into 1-inch lengths and boil in salted water for 15 to 18 minutes.

  3. Press the water from the cucumbers using the back of a spoon and work them through a sieve.

Finish the sauce

  1. Mix the sieved cucumbers with a few tablespoons of béchamel or thick white sauce without boiling again.

  2. For a better flavor, boil cucumbers in well-seasoned veal gravy, then stir in beaten egg yolks and chili vinegar or lemon juice 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the main body of the sauce and its mild, delicate flavor.
Béchamel or thick white sauce
Thickens the mixture and gives it a smooth, coating body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the cucumbers stew gently without drying.
Rich cream
Thickens and enriches the sauce, adding smoothness and mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce gently and add richness when stirred in just before serving.
Chili vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, mild sauce.

The step that matters

Mix the sieved cucumbers without boiling again. Once the sauce is thickened and enriched, boiling can cause it to separate or turn grainy, and boiling any egg yolks will curdle them. Keep the heat low and only warm it through.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, veal, egg, vinegar, butter, cream, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, veal, egg, vinegar, butter, cream, sugar. 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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