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Cucumbers Espagnole
Take young, firm cucumbers; peel and cut lengthwise in thick slices. Dip each slice in flour which has been highly seasoned with salt and pepper and quickly fry to a rich brown in a little hot dripping. Lift, drain well from the fat and arrange in a shallow saucepan. In the meantime cook slowly 1 tablespoonful of minced onion in 1 tablespoonful of butter. When changing color add 1 tablespoonful of finely chopped ham or bacon-preferably the former-and 2 scant tablespoonfuls of flour. Stir until well colored then add ¾ of a cupful of thin strained tomato and 1 cupful of beef stock or gravy; stir until smoothly thickened; season with salt and pepper.
Strain this over the browned cucumbers in the saucepan and simmer slowly until they are very tender but not broken. Have ready pieces of hot buttered toast the size and shape of the cucumber slices. Arrange these on a hot platter, place the cucumbers on them and pour the sauce round.
Cucumbers, Brown Sauce Pare and slice lengthwise some firm cucumbers. Salt and pepper each piece, flour well and fry quickly in a little butter. To the fat remaining in the pan add 1 tablespoonful of flour, stir until brown, slowly add 1 cupful of water or stock and stir until smoothly thickened. Season to taste and pour round the cucumbers. Young squash may be cooked in the same way.
A savoury treatment of cucumber that behaves more like a braised vegetable than a salad ingredient. The whole thing depends on frying the slices hard and fast before they go into the sauce.
- The hinge: dry the slicesPeeled cucumber sheds a great deal of water, and wet slices will steam rather than brown in the fat. Blot the cut faces dry, flour them just before they go into the pan, and fry in a single uncrowded layer over fairly high heat.
- QuantitiesThe onion, butter and ham or bacon are one tablespoon each; the flour is two scant tablespoons. The tomato appears as '34 of a cupful', almost certainly three-quarters of a cup of thin strained tomato, close to tomato passata or a thin puree. The stock is one cup.
- DrippingBeef or bacon dripping was the ordinary frying fat of the period and suits this dish. Any neutral oil works, though you lose some of the savour the sauce is built on.
- Espagnole in name onlyA true espagnole is a long-simmered brown stock sauce. What is described here is a small brown roux sauce enriched with ham and tomato, made in minutes; do not expect the depth of the classical version unless you start with real beef stock rather than a cube.
- Straining the sauceStraining removes the onion and ham, leaving a smooth glaze. If you would rather keep them, skip the straining and simply spoon the sauce over.
- Simmering timeThe recipe gives no time. Expect the slices to reach the 'very tender but not broken' stage after something in the region of 10 to 15 minutes at a bare simmer, depending on thickness. Test with a knife tip rather than stirring, which breaks them up.
- Cucumbers to chooseSmall firm ridge or Kirby cucumbers hold their shape best. Large watery salad cucumbers should be seeded before slicing.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. The sauce as written (about a cup of stock plus three-quarters of a cup of tomato) would suit roughly two large cucumbers, enough for three or four as a vegetable course or two as a light supper on toast.
Cooked cucumber was unremarkable in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century kitchens, where it was stewed, stuffed, fried and served in brown sauce as often as it was eaten raw; the modern assumption that a cucumber belongs only in a salad is comparatively recent. Recipes of this kind dress a cheap and abundant summer vegetable with a spoonful of ham and a cup of stock or leftover gravy: the meat is a seasoning rather than an ingredient, and the toast underneath turns a side dish into a meal. The note that young squash may be cooked the same way is characteristic of the genre, where one method was expected to stretch across whatever the garden or the market happened to offer.