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Cucumber Ragout
Pare and cut some nice cucumbers in half-inch crosswise slices. Slice equal amounts of firm tomatoes and medium-sized white onions. Flour and fry together the cucumbers and onions, using a little salt pork fat or butter. When brown lay in the tomatoes, add 1 tablespoonful of flour rubbed to a paste with a little extra fat. Stir in ½ pint of water (or weak stock if on hand); when smoothly thickened add 1 teaspoonful of salt, pepper to taste and simmer, covered, for one hour. Just before serving add 1 tablespoonful of walnut catsup.
A frugal skillet stew that treats cucumber as a cooked vegetable rather than a salad ingredient. Two things need attention: the liquid quantity and the hour-long simmer.
- The hinge: salt and drain the cucumbersCucumbers are mostly water, and flour will not stick to a wet slice. Toss the slices with a little salt, let them stand 20-30 minutes, then pat dry before flouring or the coating slides off and the pan steams instead of browning.
- "1½ pint of water"That is 3 cups, which will give a thin, soupy ragout for the amount of vegetables implied. Start with a cup or so, add more only as the pan dries, and judge by consistency rather than the stated volume.
- The one-hour simmerAn hour reduces cucumber to grey threads. Twenty to twenty-five minutes covered is enough for the onions to soften and the tomatoes to break down while the cucumber still holds shape.
- Walnut catsupA thin, dark, salty condiment of green walnuts steeped in vinegar and spice, once sold everywhere and now rare. Mushroom ketchup is the closest survivor; a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce does the same job of adding savoury depth at the end.
- Salt pork fatRendered fat from salt pork, which also brings salt. If using bacon fat instead, hold back on the teaspoon of salt until you taste at the end. Butter alone works but browns and burns faster over the frying stage.
- The flour pasteThis is a beurre manié rather than a roux, stirred in raw. Work the tablespoon of flour into an equal amount of soft fat until no dry specks remain, then add the liquid gradually or it will lump.
- Cucumber varietyCucumbers of the period were often thick-skinned and seedy, which may be why the recipe calls for paring. A standard American slicing cucumber works; scoop the seeds from anything large and watery. Waxed supermarket cucumbers should be peeled.
- YieldRoughly 1 lb each of cucumber, tomato and onion serves four as a side dish. It is good over rice or with bread to take up the sauce.
Ragoût simply means a stewed, seasoned dish, and by the time this recipe was printed the word had long since been naturalised into English-language cookbooks for almost any braise thickened with flour. Cooked cucumber, unfamiliar to many cooks now, was routine in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: it was stewed, fried, stuffed and pickled, and appears in that guise in English household manuals well before it settled into its modern role as a salad vegetable. The walnut catsup at the end places the recipe in an older tradition too, from the era when "catsup" meant a whole family of thin, brine-and-vinegar sauces made from walnuts, mushrooms, oysters or anchovies, kept on hand to lift plain cooking. The dish earns its place by turning three cheap summer vegetables and a spoonful of pork fat into a side dish for four.