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CUCUMBERS (a l'Espagnole)
Cut the cucumbers into pieces about two inches long and one inch wide, remove the seeds, strew a little salt over them, and let them remain between two plates for an hour or more. Drain off the juice, and put them into a saucepan, cover them with good stock, and let them simmer gently until quite tender, which will be in about twenty minutes. Drain them, pile them on a dish, pour some good brown sauce over them, and serve. Time, one hour. Probable cost of cucumbers, 6d. each. Sufficient, one large cucumber for half a pint of sauce.
A straightforward braised cucumber side dish from the era when cucumbers were as often cooked as eaten raw. The salting step is the one that decides whether the result is silky or watery.
- Salt and drain, properlyAn hour between two plates draws out a surprising amount of liquid; do not shorten it. Skipping it leaves the pieces flabby and dilutes the stock they simmer in.
- Cucumber varietyVictorian frame cucumbers were typically long and full of large seeds. A modern English/hothouse cucumber is the closest match; peel it and scoop the seeds with a teaspoon. Small Persian or Lebanese cucumbers need no seeding but will cook faster.
- Twenty minutes is a maximumSalted cucumber flesh collapses quickly. Check at ten minutes and pull it when a knife meets slight resistance -- it should hold its shape on the dish, as the recipe's "pile them" implies.
- "Good stock"A light veal or chicken stock, unsalted or lightly salted, since the cucumbers arrive already salted. Taste before you add any more salt to the sauce.
- "Good brown sauce"Not bottled brown sauce. This means the kitchen's espagnole -- a brown roux-based sauce built on brown stock, which is very likely what the dish's title refers to. A well-reduced demi-glace or a reduced brown stock thickened lightly is the practical substitute.
- Half a pint of sauceAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 285 ml -- rather more than most cooks would want for one cucumber. Around half that amount is plenty unless the dish is meant to be spooned over meat as well.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; one large cucumber will reasonably serve two or three as a vegetable course alongside roast or braised meat. Sauce and cucumbers should be hot at the same moment; the pieces cool fast once drained.
- Cost note"6d. each" is sixpence in pre-decimal currency, a substantial price for a single vegetable at a time when cucumbers of this size were largely a glasshouse crop rather than a year-round staple.
Cooked cucumber was ordinary in British and French kitchens well into the twentieth century -- stewed, stuffed, glazed or, as here, braised in stock and dressed with a brown sauce. The tag a l'Espagnole points not to Spain but to sauce espagnole, the brown mother sauce of the French repertoire that Carême codified in the early nineteenth century and Escoffier later streamlined; in the shorthand of Victorian cookery books, a dish finished with it could carry the name. Cassell's was a household dictionary rather than a chef's manual, so it assumes the reader already has stock and brown sauce standing ready and treats the cucumber as the only variable.