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Stewed Cucumbers
No. 2 6 cucumbers 2 tablespoonfuls of butter 1 tablespoonful of flour ½ pint of boiling water Salt and pepper to taste Pare the cucumbers, cut them in quarters, remove the seeds, and soak in cold water for a half hour. Then put them in a saucepan, cover with boiling water, add a teaspoonful of salt, and boil until tender (about thirty minutes). When done, drain, turn them carefully into a vegetable dish, pour over them drawn butter, and serve.
A short recipe that assumes you know two things it never says: how to make drawn butter, and that the flour, butter and water in the ingredient list are for that sauce rather than for the cucumbers themselves.
- The sauce is the missing stepThe butter, flour and boiling water are the drawn butter poured over at the end, not part of the cooking liquid. Cook the flour in the melted butter for a minute, whisk in the hot water, and simmer until it thickens; season with salt and pepper.
- Cut back the waterA pint and a half of water for one tablespoon of flour gives a sauce barely thicker than broth. For a coating consistency use about a cup of liquid to that quantity of butter and flour; a pint and a half suits a sauceboat for a crowd, thinned deliberately.
- Thirty minutes is too longCucumbers cooked half an hour collapse into a watery pulp. Quartered and seeded pieces are tender in 8 to 12 minutes of gentle boiling; test with a knife tip and drain the moment they yield.
- Choose the right cucumberThe recipe assumes a thick-skinned field cucumber with developed seeds, which is why it tells you to pare and seed. English or Persian cucumbers need neither, and are more delicate; ordinary supermarket slicers work well.
- The soakThe half hour in cold water firms the flesh; it is also often said to draw off some bitterness, though the recipe gives no reason for it. Older varieties did run bitter at the stem end. It is optional with modern cucumbers, and does no harm.
- Drain hardCucumber is mostly water and will keep releasing it in the serving dish, diluting the sauce. Drain in a colander for a few minutes, and shake once or twice, before saucing.
- YieldSix cucumbers serve six to eight as a side dish.
Cooked cucumber is unfamiliar now, but it was routine in nineteenth-century American and English kitchens, where the vegetable was stewed, fried in batter or stuffed and baked. Drawn butter, the flour-thickened butter sauce called for here, was the default dressing for almost any boiled vegetable or plain fish in that period, standing in for the roux-based sauces of French cookery. Cucumbers were abundant and cheap in high summer, which may account for the dish's seasonal logic.