No. 714

Puree of Cucumbers

Puree de Concombres

Peel the cucumbers and suppress the seeds; weigh two pounds of them after they are pared, blanch them for a few minutes in boiling, salted water, drain well, mince and fry them in four ounces of butter, then moisten with sufficient stock (No. 189), to cover, and let them cook and reduce until all the broth is absorbed. Pound them in a mortar adding a pint of very thick bechamel (No. 409), press through the sieve and heat the puree, adding two ounces of fine butter just before serving.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A classic French vegetable purée from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen, meant as a garnish or bed for meats rather than a soup. The whole problem with cucumber is water, and nearly every step here is aimed at driving it off.

The hinge: cook it dryThe instruction to reduce until all the broth is absorbed is the heart of the recipe. Cucumber is around 95 percent water, and a purée that has not been cooked down to a thick, almost pasty mass will loosen and weep the moment it sits on a plate.
Which cucumbersTwo pounds peeled and seeded means buying appreciably more than two pounds of ordinary field cucumbers, the exact allowance depending on how thickly you peel and how seedy they are. English or Persian cucumbers have negligible seeds and thin skins, so the trimming loss is smaller.
Stock No. 189Ranhofer's cross-reference is to one of his broths, which the reader of the full book was expected to look up. A light unsalted veal or chicken stock is the working substitute; the cucumbers have already taken salt from the blanching water, so season at the end.
Béchamel No. 409"Very thick" is the operative phrase: what is wanted is a stiff, spoon-coating paste rather than a pouring sauce. A pint of thin modern white sauce will loosen the purée past saving.
Mortar and sieveA food processor replaces the mortar in seconds, but do not skip the sieve. Pushing the purée through a fine drum sieve or chinois is what gives it the smooth, seamless texture that distinguishes a nineteenth-century purée from mashed vegetables.
Butter at the endThe final two ounces are a monté au beurre: whisk in cold butter off the heat, or over very low heat, just before it goes out. Boiling after this point will split the emulsion and leave a greasy film.
Blanching timeA few minutes means two or three in well-salted boiling water — just enough to set the colour and take the raw edge off. Longer and the cucumber begins to collapse before it ever reaches the butter.
YieldThe finished purée comes to something in the region of a quart, though how far it reduces will vary. It reheats over a bain-marie; direct heat scorches it quickly given how thick it is.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its numbered cross-references — stock No. 189, béchamel No. 409 — show it was written for a professional brigade that already had those preparations standing in the kitchen. Purées like this one sit among the garnishings rather than the vegetables because in classical service they were structural: a spoonful under a cutlet, a border piped around a platter, a filling for artichoke bottoms. Cooked cucumber — stewed, glazed, stuffed and puréed as readily as sliced raw — was a routine part of the French repertoire. Pounding in a mortar and forcing through a sieve was the standard route to a fine texture before mechanical purée equipment.