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To Fry Cucumbers
Peel the cucumbers; cut in lengthwise slices; put in cold water for about one hour. Wipe dry with a cloth; season with salt and pepper; dip the slices in well-beaten egg, then in fine cracker, and fry a light brown on both sides.
A plain egg-and-cracker breading, and it works as well now as it did then. The one thing that decides the outcome is how dry the slices are before they hit the egg.
- Dry means dryCucumber is over 95 percent water, and any surface moisture will loosen the crust in the pan. After the cold soak, blot the slices between towels and let them sit a few minutes in open air before breading.
- Why the cold soakAn hour in cold water firms the flesh so the slices hold their shape in hot fat. It is optional rather than essential; if you skip it, cut the slices a little thicker, about 1/2 inch.
- "Fine cracker"Cracker crumbs, rolled fine — soda crackers or saltines are the closest match to what the book means. About 1 cup of crumbs and 2 beaten eggs will coat two medium cucumbers. Panko gives a coarser, crisper crust if you prefer it.
- The fat and the panThe original does not say what fat or how much; lard or drippings in a skillet would have been the usual choice. Use about 1/4 inch of a neutral oil at 350-360F; below that the coating absorbs fat, above it the crumbs brown before the cucumber softens. Two to three minutes a side is enough.
- Choosing cucumbersSmall, firm cucumbers with undeveloped seeds fry best. If the seed cavity is watery and pale, scrape it out with a spoon before slicing, or use a large pickling cucumber instead of a long slicing type.
- Season the crumbs tooThe recipe salts the cucumber itself, which draws out water. Salting the cracker crumbs instead — or as well — puts the seasoning where you taste it and keeps the slices drier.
- Yield and servingTwo medium cucumbers serve three or four as a side. Serve immediately; fried cucumber goes limp within ten minutes and does not reheat.
Fried cucumber belongs to a period when the vegetable was treated as a cooked food at least as often as a raw one. Nineteenth-century American and English cookbooks stewed cucumbers in butter, stuffed them, or sliced and fried them like eggplant or salsify, and there was a persistent belief — repeated in household manuals of the era — that raw cucumber was hard to digest, which gave cooks another reason to put it in the pan. An egg-and-cracker-crumb coating of this kind was a common all-purpose breading in American cookery around 1900, used for oysters, veal cutlets, tomatoes and eggplant alike; cracker crumbs were cheap and kept well, which made them a ready alternative to bread crumbs. Fried green tomatoes are the best-known survivor of this family of dishes, though fried eggplant never left the repertoire either.