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Sauce

Cucumber Sauce for Salmon, Eels, Etc

A chilled cucumber sauce made with lemon, milk, egg yolks, and heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,067 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cucumber Sauce for Salmon, Eels, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumber

  1. Peel the cucumber and slice it into pieces as thick as a penny.

  2. Sprinkle the salt over the cucumber and let it stand for 1 hour.

  3. Wash off the salt and chop the cucumber into small pieces.

  4. Pour the strained lemon juice over the cucumber.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk and add it to the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Cook and stir until the mixture thickens to a cream-like consistency.

  3. Strain the mixture into a bowl and add the heavy cream.

Combine and chill

  1. Stir in the cucumber and mix well.

  2. Chill the sauce in a cold place or on ice 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 + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the milk mixture into a cream-like sauce as they cook.
Whole milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg yolks thicken into a smooth custard.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.
Cucumber
Provides the fresh, crisp body and mild flavor of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Cook and stir the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the heat is too high or stirring stops, they can scramble and curdle. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, milk, egg, cream):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, milk, egg, 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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