Skip to main content
Main

Vthite Cucumber Sauce

A cucumber sauce made with boiled cucumbers, bechamel sauce, and optional egg yolks and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Vthite Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Quarter the cucumbers and remove the seeds and rinds.

  2. Cut them into 1-inch lengths and boil in salted water for 15 to 18 minutes.

  3. Squeeze out excess water and work through a sieve.

Finish the sauce

  1. Mix with bechamel sauce and do not boil again.

  2. Serve hot, optionally adding beaten egg yolks and chili vinegar or lemon juice just 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. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. 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

Young cucumbers
Provide the main vegetable body and fresh flavour of the sauce once cooked and sieved.
Bechamel or thick white sauce
Supplies the thick, creamy base that holds the cucumber purée together.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce with richness and body when stirred in just before serving.
Chili vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Do not boil the sauce again. Once the egg yolks are added, boiling can scramble them and cause the sauce to curdle and turn grainy. Keeping it hot but below boiling preserves a smooth texture.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, egg, vinegar, sugar. 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.

More cucumber sauce recipes

White 19for Fish 3 See all 106 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes