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Dessert

Cucumbers a LA Bourgeoise

A cucumber dish served with a brown onion sauce made from consommé, sauce tournée, butter, lemon juice, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumbers a LA Bourgeoise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onion sauce

  1. Fry the finely shredded onions in butter until brown.

  2. Drain the onions and place them in a stewpan.

  3. Add the consommé and sauce tournée to the onions and simmer on low heat.

  4. Reduce the mixture to half its thickness.

  5. Stir in a bit of butter and a squeeze of lemon juice.

  6. Season with coarse sea salt as needed.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot sauce over the prepared 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. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

Onions
Browned and simmered, they build the sweet, savoury base of the sauce.
Butter
Browns the onions and adds richness and a smooth finish to the sauce.
Consommé
Supplies the liquid that the sauce reduces and carries its savoury flavour.
Sauce tournée
Thickens the mixture and gives the sauce body as it reduces.

The step that matters

Reducing the mixture to half its thickness. Simmering on low heat lets water evaporate slowly, concentrating flavour and thickening the sauce. Too high a heat can scorch the onions or break the sauce, so it should be watched closely.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, sauce, cucumber. 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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