Skip to main content
Snack

Cucumbers Fried in Batter

Cucumbers fried in a batter of flour, egg, and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cucumbers Fried in Batter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers thinly.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and let stand for 20 minutes.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg and mix with flour, baking powder, butter, a pinch of salt, and enough sweet milk to make a smooth batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the cucumber slices into the batter.

  2. Fry in boiling lard until golden brown.

  3. Drain on brown paper and serve hot.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cucumber + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 moisture inside the crisp coating.
Egg
Binds the batter so it coats the slices and sets when fried.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that clings to the cucumber.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making it lighter and puffier when fried.
Sweet milk
Thins the flour and egg into a smooth batter with the right coating consistency.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Hot fat sets the batter quickly and browns it, while the cucumber inside steams.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, egg, flour, butter, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, flour, butter, milk. 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

FrittersFritters56 recipesCrisp CrackersCrisp Crackers7 recipes