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Cucumber, Stuffed
Peel a large cucumber, remove a narrow piece from the side, and scoop out the seeds with a tea-spoon. Fill the cavity with nicely-flavoured forcemeat, replace the piece, and bind it round with strong white thread. Line the bottom of a saucepan with slices of meat and bacon, put the cucumber upon it, and then two or three more slices. Cover the whole with nicely-flavoured stock, and if more vegetables are desired, two or three sliced carrots, turnips, and onions may be added. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer gently, until cucumber, meat, and vegetables are sufficiently cooked. If the cucumber is tender before the rest, it should be taken out, and kept hot. Thicken the gravy with a little butter and flour, and pour it over the cucumber. Time, about one hour. Probable cost of cucumber, 6d. or 1s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A Victorian braise in which the cucumber is treated as a vegetable to be stewed rather than eaten raw. The method is sound; only the vocabulary and the shopping list need translating.
- Choose the right cucumberThis wants a large, thick-skinned ridge or field cucumber, not a thin salad or English cucumber, which has too little flesh to hold a stuffing and collapses in an hour of simmering. A short, fat pickling type or a peeled section of an outsized garden cucumber works best.
- ForcemeatVictorian forcemeat here means a bound minced stuffing: about 8 oz of minced veal, pork or sausage meat with breadcrumbs, a beaten egg, chopped parsley, grated lemon zest, salt, pepper and a little mace or nutmeg. Pack it firmly so it holds when the cucumber is sliced.
- Tying and liningUse unwaxed cotton kitchen twine rather than sewing thread, and take the strip from the side in one clean piece so it fits back flush. The slices of meat and bacon lining the pan keep the cucumber off the metal and enrich the stock; a few bacon rashers and any cheap braising cut will do.
- The hingeKeep the liquid at a bare shiver, never a rolling boil. Cucumber flesh is mostly water held in a fragile structure and will fall apart into the gravy if the pan is allowed to bubble. The original directs that the cucumber be lifted out and kept hot if it is tender before the rest; a skewer sliding through easily is the sign.
- Stock and cooking timeEnough stock to just cover; the recipe gives no quantity. One hour at a simmer will cook the cucumber and any minced stuffing through, but the sliced carrot, turnip and onion may want the same time or a little more; cut them small if you are working to the hour.
- Thickening"A little butter and flour" means butter and flour kneaded to a paste, the equivalent of what is now called beurre manie: work equal weights, say 1/2 oz each, and whisk it into the strained simmering gravy in small pieces until it coats a spoon. Give it two or three minutes to lose the raw flour taste.
- Cost and yieldThe 6d. or 1s. is a period price and tells you only that cucumbers were seasonal and sometimes dear. Four to five servings is realistic if the braising meat and vegetables are served alongside; the cucumber alone stretches to two or three.
Stewed and stuffed cucumber belongs to a long English tradition, running back through eighteenth-century cookery books, of treating the cucumber as a cooked vegetable — fried in butter, stewed in gravy, or hollowed and forced like a marrow. The technique is a textbook braise: an aromatic lining of meat and bacon, barely covering stock, gentle heat, and a gravy finished with butter and flour, all lessons transferable to any other vegetable of the same shape. The insistence on removing the cucumber if it softens before the meat is the mark of a book written for cooks juggling several textures in one pot.