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Cucumber Sauce
Take three young cucumbers, slice them rather thickly, and fry them in a little butter till they are lightly browned. Dredge them with pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg, and simmer them till tender in as much good brown gravy as will cover them. White sauce or melted butter may be substituted for the gravy if these are more suitable for the dish with which the cucumber sauce is to be served. Time, about a quarter of an hour to simmer the cucumbers. Probable cost, small cucumbers, 4d. each. Sufficient, three young cucumbers for one pint of sauce.
A short Victorian side sauce that behaves more like a stewed vegetable garnish. Two of its terms mean something different now, and getting them right is the whole job.
- "Melted butter" is not melted butterIn British cookery books of this period melted butter means a thin white sauce — butter, flour and water or milk cooked together — not a puddle of clarified fat. Plain melted butter will simply split around the cucumber.
- "Good brown gravy"Most often a made brown sauce: reduced brown stock, lightly thickened, though period usage also covers gravy from a roast. A well-reduced beef or veal stock with a little roux gives the intended body.
- The cucumbersVictorian "young cucumbers" were small ridge or frame types, thin-skinned and with little developed seed. A single English cucumber cut into 1/2-inch slices stands in for the three called for; peel it and scrape out any watery core so the sauce does not thin out.
- Salt them firstModern cucumbers are watery. Salting the slices for 20 minutes and patting them dry lets them brown in the butter instead of steaming, which is the difference between a sauce and a pale, weeping mess.
- The quarter hour is rightFifteen minutes of gentle simmering is what turns the slices translucent and tender without collapsing them. Cucumber goes to mush quickly once it breaks down, so keep the pan at a bare simmer and stop while the pieces still hold their shape.
- NutmegGrated fresh, and sparingly — a few rasps for a pint. Pre-ground nutmeg is flat, and the recipe gives no quantity, so a heavy hand will turn the sauce medicinal.
- Yield and servingAbout one pint, as the recipe states. Choose the base by the dish: brown gravy with mutton, lamb or braised beef; the white version with boiled fowl, veal or salmon.
- Cost noteThe recipe prices small cucumbers at 4d. each. Cucumbers of this period were commonly frame- or glasshouse-grown, which may account for the price, though the recipe itself says nothing about season.
Cooked cucumber was ordinary in British and French kitchens long before it became almost exclusively a salad vegetable. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cooks stewed, stuffed, fried and pickled it, and a cucumber sauce built on brown or white foundation sauce is often said to have been served alongside lamb and mutton. The recipe demonstrates the period's modular system: one dish, two possible bases, chosen to match whatever it is served beside. The pricing by the piece rather than the pound reflects a supply that was largely from frames and glasshouses on market-garden land around the larger cities. It was an under-glass commodity, and a cook who wanted them out of season paid accordingly.