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Cucumbers, Bechamel
Peel three good-sized fresh cucumbers. Cut them into quarters, lengthwise, remove the seeds, then cut them into half-inch pieces. Mix in a small saucepan one tablespoon butter with one and a half tablespoons flour, pour in a gill milk and a half gill cream, mix until it comes to a boil and keep hot on a corner of the range.
Heat a tablespoon butter in a frying pan, add the cucumbers, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper; gently toss and briskly cook for ten minutes, drain on a sieve, add to the sauce with a saltspoon grated nutmeg; mix a little, boil for five minutes more, pour into a hot dish and serve.
A short vegetable side that hinges on driving water out of the cucumbers before they meet the sauce. Everything else is straightforward roux work.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill is 1/2 cup, so the sauce uses 1/2 cup milk and 1/4 cup cream. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon.
- The hinge: dry the cucumbersCucumbers are about 95 percent water, and the ten minutes of brisk cooking in butter is there to drive it off rather than to soften them. Use a wide pan over fairly high heat so the liquid evaporates rather than pools, and drain them properly in the sieve; skip this and the béchamel turns to thin cucumber water.
- Salt downA teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper for three cucumbers reads as heavy to modern palates. Start with half those amounts and correct at the end.
- Sauce consistencyOne tablespoon butter to one and a half tablespoons flour with only 3/4 cup liquid gives a stiff, coating sauce, which is deliberate here since the cucumbers will still release some moisture. If it seizes, loosen it with a spoonful of milk.
- "Keep hot on a corner of the range"On a coal range that meant the cooler edge of the top plate. On a modern hob, the lowest setting with a lid, or off the heat entirely with a lid on, stirred occasionally so no skin forms.
- The last five minutesOnce the cucumbers go into the sauce, keep it at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil, and stir. The purpose is to marry the flavours; hard boiling only breaks the cucumber pieces down and can scorch the flour on the pan bottom.
- Cucumbers to buyStandard field cucumbers with developed seeds are what the recipe assumes, hence the quartering and seeding. English or Persian cucumbers can be cut straight into half-inch pieces with no seed removal.
- YieldServes four as a vegetable side alongside roast or boiled meat.
Cooked cucumber is one of the clearest markers of how much vegetable cookery has narrowed since 1900: in nineteenth-century European and American kitchens the cucumber was as often stewed, stuffed, fried or dressed in a white sauce as it was eaten raw, and books of this period treat it much as they treat vegetable marrow or summer squash. The sauce is a plain béchamel, named for Louis de Béchameil, a steward in the household of Louis XIV, though the attribution is traditional and the sauce may well predate him. The grating of nutmeg at the end is standard for béchamel in French practice and was carried into English and American cookbooks along with the sauce.