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Cucumber Sauce

A sauce of cucumbers simmered with consommé, sauce tournée, clarified butter, sugar, salt, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Cut cucumbers into six or seven pieces, then cut each piece into four quarters, removing seeds and rind.

  2. In a pan, heat clarified butter and fry cucumbers until light brown.

  3. Drain cucumbers on a sieve to remove excess butter.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pint saucepan, combine cucumbers, consommé, sauce tournée, sugar, and salt.

  2. Simmer gently until reduced by half.

  3. Stir in butter and lemon juice gently without breaking the cucumbers.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Provide the main body and texture of the sauce once fried and simmered until tender.
Clarified butter
Frying fat that browns the cucumber pieces and adds a rich, nutty flavour.
Consommé
Adds savoury liquid that reduces with the cucumbers to build the sauce's body.
Sauce tournée
Brown sauce base that gives the sauce depth, body and a richer flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Stir in butter and lemon juice gently without breaking the cucumbers. Cucumber pieces are soft after frying and simmering, so rough stirring breaks them apart and clouds the sauce. Gentle folding keeps the pieces whole and the sauce clear.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, sugar, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, sugar, 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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