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Cucumbers, Fried
Take the rind from the cucumbers, slice them, dredge over them a little pepper, and lay them in flour. Make some butter very hot, put in the slices, and when they are tender and lightly browned, strew a very little salt over them; drain them, and place them on a hot dish under the steak or hash with which they are to be served. Time, ten minutes. Probable cost of cucumbers, 6d. each. Sufficient, one small cucumber for one pound of rump steak.
A Victorian side that has almost vanished: cucumber treated as a hot vegetable rather than a salad. It works, but only if the slices are dry before they hit the fat.
- The hinge: get the water outCucumber is over 95 per cent water, and wet slices will steam in the butter instead of browning. Cut them thick (about 1/4 inch), spread them on a towel and pat dry, or salt them for 20 minutes, rinse and dry hard before flouring.
- Why the salt comes lastSalt comes last -- The recipe dredges pepper over the slices before frying and adds salt only at the end. Salt worked into the flour would tend to draw moisture out during frying and slacken the coating, though the original gives no reason for the order.
- The cucumbers themselvesVictorian kitchens often dealt with larger ridge or frame cucumbers with tougher skin and developed seeds, which may be why the recipe opens 'take the rind from'. A modern seedless cucumber needs no peeling; if you use a field cucumber, peel it and scoop the seedy core.
- Butter "very hot"Whole butter browns and burns before it will fry cucumber properly. Clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, gives you the same flavour with room to work at around 350-375F.
- Ten minutes is the pan time, not per sideThick slices want 3-4 minutes a side in a single uncrowded layer. Cook in batches; piling the pan drops the temperature and you get grey, floppy cucumber.
- Reading the old costing'6d. each' is sixpence in pre-decimal money, a price note for household reckoning rather than an instruction. It tells you a cucumber was a costed purchase, priced by the piece.
- Yield and servingOne small cucumber to a pound of steak works out at roughly two portions. "Under the steak" means the fried slices go on the hot dish first and the meat rests on them, so the juices run into the cucumber.
Cooked cucumber was ordinary in British and French kitchens well before it became salad-only food: eighteenth- and nineteenth-century books stew it in gravy, stuff it, fry it and serve it as a sauce for lamb and mutton. The logic is the same as the more familiar cucumber-with-salmon pairing.