Cucumber Salad for Fish Course (With a handy slicer remove)

The text as printed breaks off mid-sentence, so what survives is only the preparation of the cucumbers themselves. The notes below cover what the fragment does say and what the period convention behind it was.

• The text is incompleteThe passage ends at "and let," and the missing continuation was most likely an instruction to let the slices stand in ice water or stand covered with salt, both common in books of this period. Anything past the slicing is not in the source and should not be guessed at as though it were.
• A handy slicerThis is the hand slicer or cucumber plane sold for exactly this job, a close relative of the mandoline. A mandoline on its thinnest setting, or the slicing blade of a food processor, gives the near-translucent slices the recipe wants; a knife rarely will.
• Removing the rindCucumbers of the era generally had tougher skins and were often bitter at the stem end, which is why the recipe begins by peeling them. Modern thin-skinned English or Persian cucumbers need no peeling, though peeling still gives the paler, more formal look intended for a fish course.
• The crisping stepWhether the sliced cucumber was salted and drained or simply set in ice water, the purpose was the same: firm slices that do not flood the dressing. Thirty minutes is ample either way, and salted slices should be rinsed and pressed dry before dressing.
• What went on itA cucumber salad for the fish course was commonly finished with a plain French dressing, oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, mixed at the last moment; the fragment itself does not say.
• YieldThe recipe gives no quantity. As a working estimate, two medium cucumbers sliced thin will dress about four small side portions of the size a fish course expects.