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Cucumbers, Stewed, with Onions
Prepare the cucumbers as in the last recipe, and fry with them an equal number of slices of onion, being very careful that they do not burn. Stew these in the gravy with the cucumbers. If the sauce would be preferred a little richer, the yolks of two eggs might be added to it, but of course if this were done the sauce must not be allowed to boil after the addition. Time, half an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 5d. Sufficient for a moderate-sized dish.
A Victorian side dish that treats cucumber as a cooked vegetable rather than a salad ingredient. The recipe leans on the entry before it, so a little reconstruction is needed.
- What "prepare as in the last recipe" meansThe preceding entry is not reproduced here, so the preparation has to be inferred. The usual English method for stewed cucumbers is to peel, halve lengthways, scoop out the seeds if large, cut into thick pieces, dust with flour and fry gently in butter before stewing in gravy. Use firm ridge or Persian cucumbers rather than thin-skinned English ones, which collapse.
- The gravy"Gravy" here is not pan drippings but a light meat stock of the sort a Victorian kitchen kept on hand. A good unsalted beef or chicken stock, lightly thickened, does the same job. The recipe gives no quantities; roughly a cup for a dish of four cucumbers is a reasonable working amount.
- The hinge: the egg liaisonOnce the yolks go in, the sauce must stay below a simmer or it will scramble. Temper the yolks with a few spoonfuls of the hot gravy off the heat, stir them back in, and hold the pan at around 160-170F until it thickens. Serve immediately.
- Don't let the onions colourDon't let the onions catch -- The instruction is against burning, and keeping the onions pale is the difference between a mild dish and a bitter one. The original fries the onion slices with the cucumbers; cook them gently in butter over low heat so they soften without catching, then stew them in the gravy together.
- Half an hour is for the stewingHalf an hour -- The book's "Time, half an hour" is the cooking time it allows, and suits thick pieces of a mature, seedy cucumber. Modern supermarket cucumbers are far more watery and will be soft in 10 to 15 minutes; test with a knife tip rather than the clock.
- Salt and drain firstNot in the original, but useful now. Salting the cut cucumber for 20 minutes and patting it dry draws off water that would otherwise thin the gravy into soup.
- Cost and yield1s. 5d. is the costing the book gives for pricing a household menu; it has no modern equivalent worth calculating. "A moderate-sized dish" is not defined in the book, but implies a vegetable side for several people at a multi-dish table.
Cooked cucumber is one of the clearest markers of how differently the Victorians ate a vegetable that is now almost entirely raw. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English cookery books stew, fry, stuff and ragout cucumbers routinely, often serving them with lamb or mutton, and the technique here may perhaps be seen as a version of a French ragoût de concombres naturalised into an English kitchen: fry in butter, moisten with gravy, finish with egg yolks. The egg-yolk liaison itself is older than the roux-based sauces that displaced it, and Cassell's offers it as an optional enrichment. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery was arranged alphabetically as a reference work, which is why this entry sits abruptly on the shoulders of the one before it rather than repeating the preparation.