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To Stew Cucumbers and Celery

A stew of sliced cucumbers and onion simmered in broth or butter, thickened with butter and flour, finished with cream and spices.

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 ↓

To Stew Cucumbers and Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel the cucumbers.

  2. Slice the cucumbers thinly, or cut small ones in half lengthwise.

  3. Slice the onion, using one onion for every two cucumbers.

  4. Clean the celery heads.

  5. Cut the celery heads into three-inch lengths.

Stew and thicken

  1. Stew the cucumbers and onion together in broth or melted butter, adding cayenne, black pepper, and salt.

  2. Thicken the sauce by kneading butter into flour.

  3. Skim the sauce and pour it over the cucumbers.

  4. Stew the celery in a little butter until tender.

  5. Thicken the sauce by rolling butter into flour.

  6. Add sweet cream to the sauce.

  7. Season the sauce with pepper, mace, and salt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Make up the bulk of the stew and give it a mild, fresh flavor when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor when stewing and helps form the thickened sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when kneaded or rolled with butter, giving it body.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.
Broth
Provides the liquid base in which the cucumbers and onion stew, adding savory flavor.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with butter and flour. Flour must be fully worked into the butter before it meets liquid; otherwise it clumps and the sauce stays grainy or uneven in thickness, since starch only thickens evenly when it is dispersed and heated.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

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