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Sauce

Common Cucumber Sauce

A sauce of sautéed cucumbers in butter, beef broth, salt, pepper, optional onion and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Common Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cucumbers.

  2. Dust the sliced cucumbers lightly with pepper and flour.

Make the sauce

  1. In a small saucepan, heat the butter over a brisk fire until melted.

  2. Add the cucumbers and fry until golden brown, about 12 to 15 minutes.

  3. Brown the minced onion with the cucumbers.

  4. Gradually pour in the beef broth or brown gravy.

  5. Season with salt and more pepper if needed, then stew for 5 minutes.

  6. Add vinegar 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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young cucumbers
Form the body of the sauce and brown in the butter to give it flavour.
Butter
Fat that melts and fries the cucumbers, carrying flavour and aiding browning.
Flour (in the method)
Dusted on the cucumbers to help them brown and thicken the sauce slightly.
Beef broth or brown gravy
Liquid base that gives the sauce its savoury, meaty body.

The step that matters

Frying the cucumbers until golden brown. Cucumbers are mostly water, so they release liquid as they cook. Frying over a brisk fire drives off that moisture and browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, which builds flavour. Stopping early leaves the sauce watery and bland.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, butter, beef, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, butter, beef, pepper, vinegar. 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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