Skip to main content
Sauce

White Cucumber Sauce

A sauce made from boiled cucumber puree mixed with béchamel, egg yolks, and seasonings.

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

White Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

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

  2. Cut the cucumbers into 1-inch lengths.

  3. Boil the cucumbers in salted water for 15 to 18 minutes.

  4. Squeeze and work the cucumbers through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the cucumber puree with the béchamel sauce.

  2. Stir in beaten egg yolks and chili vinegar or lemon juice just before serving.

  3. Serve hot without letting it cool.

Alternative methods

  1. For a better flavor, boil cucumbers in well-seasoned veal gravy.

  2. Alternatively, slice cucumbers and stew in butter without browning.

  3. Boil in pale veal gravy thickened with rich cream and add a pinch of sugar.

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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sauce and butter 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 vegetable body and fresh flavor of the sauce.
Béchamel sauce
Forms the thick white base that gives the sauce its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when stirred in just before serving.
Chili vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness.
Veal gravy
Adds savory depth when used as the cooking liquid for the cucumbers.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks without letting the sauce cool or boil. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce is too hot they can scramble and curdle, and if it cools too much the sauce will not thicken smoothly.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes