Skip to main content
Main

Cucumbers in White Sauce

Cucumbers cooked in a butter and veal gravy sauce thickened with cream and sweetened with sugar, finished with chili vinegar or lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cucumbers in White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cucumbers.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and add the sliced cucumbers. Cook gently without browning for 15 to 18 minutes.

  2. Add the veal gravy and bring to a simmer.

  3. Thicken the sauce with the rich cream and stir in the sugar.

  4. Just before serving, add a splash of Chili vinegar or lemon juice.

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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the dish and soften gently in butter, becoming tender and moist.
Butter
Carries the cucumbers' flavour and gives a rich, smooth mouthfeel to the dish.
Veal gravy
Supplies the savoury meaty base that the sauce is built on.
Rich cream
Thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds a light sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar or lemon.

The step that matters

Cook the cucumbers gently without browning. Cucumbers are mostly water. Cooking them gently over low heat lets them soften and release their juices into the butter without browning. Browning would change the delicate flavour and colour of the sauce.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes