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Boiled Cucumbers
Old cucumbers may be pared, cut in pieces, cooked until soft in boiling salted water, drained, mashed and seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper.
A one-line method for using up cucumbers that have gone past salad condition. It works, but the success of the dish rests almost entirely on getting the water out.
- Drain hard, then drain againCucumber is roughly 95 percent water, and boiled flesh holds far more of it than potato does. After draining in a colander, press the pulp against the sides with a spoon or return it to the dry pan over low heat for a minute or two to steam off the excess, or the seasoned mash will be soup.
- "Old cucumbers" means seedy onesThe recipe is most likely aimed at large, yellowing, thick-skinned garden cucumbers left too long on the vine. Halve them lengthwise and scrape out the developed seeds with a spoon before cutting up; the seed cavity is the wettest part.
- Cooking timeCut into 1-inch pieces, they are soft in about 8 to 12 minutes in boiling salted water. There is no advantage in longer boiling and considerable loss of what flavor remains.
- BitternessOlder cucumbers can carry noticeable cucurbitacin, concentrated in the skin and the stem end. Pare generously as directed and cut away an inch at the stem; a badly bitter specimen will not improve with boiling and is best discarded.
- SeasoningButter, salt and pepper are the whole of it, so be liberal with the butter. A little grated nutmeg, dill, or a spoonful of cream will lift the mash if it tastes flat.
- YieldTwo large field cucumbers give roughly two modest side servings once the water is driven off.
Cooked cucumber is far older in English and American kitchens than the modern assumption that the vegetable belongs only in a salad bowl or a pickle crock. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cookery books stewed, fried, stuffed and buttered them freely, and a recipe like this one exists for a practical reason: before refrigeration and year-round produce, a home gardener's cucumber vine delivered more fruit than could be eaten fresh, and the ones that swelled and yellowed on the vine were too coarse for slicing. Such a recipe is an exercise in thrift, the small domestic economies that turned a glut or a past-its-prime vegetable into a dish for the table.