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To Stew Cucumbers

A stew of sliced cucumbers, onions, flour, butter, brown gravy, pepper, lemon pickle, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Stew Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers into 1-inch thick slices.

  2. Slice the onion and coat it with flour.

  3. Fry the onion in butter until golden brown.

Stew and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine the cucumbers, fried onions, brown gravy, pepper, lemon pickle, and salt.

  2. Stew until the cucumbers are tender, skimming off any fat.

  3. Serve as a side dish.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

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 dish, softening into tender pieces as they stew.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it browns in butter.
Flour
Coats the onion and helps thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Fats the onion for frying, adding richness and browning.
Brown gravy
Supplies the liquid and savory flavor that the cucumbers stew in.

The step that matters

Skimming off any fat. Fat rises to the surface of a stew as it simmers, and leaving it in makes the sauce greasy and heavy. Removing it as it collects keeps the sauce clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, flour, butter, pepper, lemon. 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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