Home › Vegetables › Cucumbers a la Poulette
Cucumbers a la Poulette
Peel 2 small, young cucumbers. Remove the seeds. Cut the fruit into pieces about one inch thick and two inches long, stew these till tender in water with a little salt and vinegar in it; drain them; put into a stewpan 1 ounce of butter and 3/4 of an ounce of flour; mix the butter and flour well, and let them remain about three minutes. Add gradually 1 pint of nicely flavored stock. Simmer gently for fifteen minutes. Put in the cucumbers, with a seasoning of salt and pepper, and in a minute or two, 2 tablespoonfuls of cream. Draw the sauce from the fire, and, just before serving it, add the well-beaten yolks of 2 eggs, and the juice of half a lemon. Time, one hour.
A velouté-style cucumber dish finished with egg yolk and lemon, the classic à la poulette treatment. The whole thing hinges on the final liaison.
- The hinge: adding the yolksPull the pan off the heat before the yolks go in, and temper them first by whisking a ladle of the hot sauce into the beaten yolks, then returning the mixture to the pan. Yolks stirred straight into a simmering sauce will scramble into threads.
- Lemon lastAcid added while the pan is still hot enough can curdle the cream and yolk. Stir in the lemon juice after the sauce has come off the heat and slackened slightly, and serve immediately.
- Blanching the cucumbersSalted, acidulated water helps the pieces hold shape and keeps them pale. Five to eight minutes for inch-thick batons is plenty; longer and they collapse into the sauce.
- Cucumber choiceThe recipe calls for small, young cucumbers; a modern English or Persian cucumber works well and needs no seeding. A large field cucumber should be peeled and seeded as directed.
- Roux quantities1 oz butter to 3/4 oz flour is about 2 tablespoons butter to 3 tablespoons flour. "Let them remain about three minutes" means cook the roux without letting it colour, since this sauce should stay ivory.
- Stock"Nicely flavored stock" probably means a light stock of the sort a kitchen would have to hand, veal or chicken. Use unsalted or low-sodium stock, as the sauce simmers for fifteen minutes and the cucumbers arrive already salted.
- MeasuresRead as a US pint this is 2 cups; if the source follows English measure it is an imperial pint, 20 fl oz or about 2 1/2 cups. The sauce will be thin at first and thickens as it simmers and again when the yolks go in.
- Time and yieldThe stated hour presumably covers preparation as well; active cooking is nearer thirty minutes. Two cucumbers in a pint of sauce should serve about four as a side dish.