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Cucumbers, Boiled

Boiled cucumbers served with white sauce or melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,174 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cucumbers, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the cucumbers and cut each into four pieces.

  2. Remove the seeds from the cucumber pieces.

Cook

  1. Gently cook the cucumbers in boiling salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the cucumbers well.

Serve

  1. Serve with either white sauce or plain melted butter.

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 + saucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the main vegetable, becoming soft and tender with mild flavour when cooked in water.
White sauce or melted butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the tender cucumber pieces and softening their mild taste.

The step that matters

Gently cook the cucumbers until tender. Cucumber flesh is high in water and softens quickly. Vigorous boiling can break the pieces apart and turn them mushy, so a gentle simmer keeps their shape while they become tender.

“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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