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Fried Cucumbers
Peel the cucumbers, slice in half-inch slices, and put them in ice water for half an hour. Drain, wipe dry, and roll in beaten egg, then in fine salted cracker crumbs. Fry in deep boiling fat; drain in a hot oven on brown paper, dust with salt and pepper, and serve hot.
If the cucumbers are quite large, they may be cut lengthwise in quarters and the seeds scooped out by drawing the tip of a spoon down the centre. Then divide them once in length, roll, and fry as before.
A straightforward breaded-and-fried vegetable, and one of the better uses for the large, seedy cucumbers that turn up late in the season. The whole thing turns on getting the slices genuinely dry before they meet the egg.
- Dry them properlyCucumber is mostly water, and any surface moisture will lift the crumb coating off in the fat. After the ice-water soak, blot each slice on both sides and let them sit on a towel a few minutes before breading.
- Salt first if you have timeThe ice water firms the flesh but does nothing about internal moisture. Salting the slices for twenty minutes, then rinsing and drying, gives a firmer result and less spatter.
- Cracker crumbs"Fine salted cracker crumbs" means soda or water crackers rolled fine — saltines crushed to a coarse sand are the direct equivalent. Panko works but gives a spikier, less period texture.
- Deep boiling fatFat does not boil; the phrase is period shorthand for fat at frying heat. Aim for 365–375°F. Below that the coating soaks; above it the crumbs brown before the cucumber softens.
- Draining in a hot ovenThe original drains the fried slices in a hot oven on brown paper to hold batches. A rack set over a sheet pan in a low oven does the same job without the paper going greasy against the food.
- Which cucumbersStandard waxed supermarket cucumbers need peeling, as directed. Large field or pickling cucumbers are the ones worth quartering and seeding by the spoon method described.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities; two large cucumbers will make roughly a side dish for four. Fry in batches so the fat temperature holds, and serve immediately — they lose their crispness quickly.
Fried cucumber belongs to a long American habit of treating the vegetable as something other than a salad ingredient. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century household books stewed, baked and fried cucumbers, and the cucumber's reputation as indigestible when raw was still repeated in domestic manuals of the period; cooking was thought to correct that. The egg-and-cracker-crumb coating here is a standard American frying treatment of the period, applied in much the same way to oysters, veal cutlets, eggplant and parsnips. Fried cucumbers faded from home cooking as year-round produce made the seasonal glut less pressing, though fried pickles keep the technique alive in a sharper form.