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Stuffed Cucumbers
Peel three good-sized, sound, ripe cucumbers, cut into four pieces crosswise, then scoop out three-quarters of the soft part of each piece and plunge in boiling water, boil for five minutes, take up and thoroughly drain on a cloth. Skin three country sausages, place the meat in a mortar with two tablespoons bread crumbs, half a teaspoon chopped parsley, two tablespoons cream, one egg yolk, and one saltspoon cayenne pepper. Thoroughly pound until a smooth pulp; season the cucumber evenly with a half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons white pepper, then fill up with the force, neatly smooth the top of each, place on a baking tin, cover with a buttered paper, set in the oven for ten minutes, remove, lift up the paper and use as required.
A French-style concombre farci written for a kitchen with a marble mortar and a coal range. Two things need attention: the oven temperature is never given, and ten minutes will not cook raw pork.
- The hinge: cook the sausage throughTen minutes under buttered paper is nowhere near enough for a raw pork forcemeat. Bake at 375F until the filling registers 160F on a thermometer, which will take roughly 25 to 30 minutes for pieces this size.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. The recipe therefore asks for about 1/4 teaspoon cayenne and 3/4 teaspoon white pepper, which is assertive but in keeping with the period.
- "Ripe" cucumbersProbably large, mature field cucumbers with a thick wall rather than small pickling types. Choose fat, straight cucumbers about 8 inches long so the four crosswise sections stand upright; peel and scoop with a melon baller or a narrow spoon.
- Country sausagePlain fresh pork breakfast sausage, bulk or in casings, seasoned with sage and pepper and nothing sweet. Three sausages is an elastic quantity; something in the region of 6 ounces of meat will fill twelve pieces. Skip the mortar and pulse it in a food processor with the crumbs, cream and yolk until smooth.
- Oven and the buttered paperNo temperature is given; 375F suits it. The buttered paper is a lid to keep the surface from drying and browning, so a round of parchment cut to the pan does the same job as buttered kitchen paper.
- ParboilingFive minutes in boiling water softens the cucumber pieces before they are stuffed. Drain them cut-side down on a towel or the water they release will pool under the stuffing.
- Yield and servingTwelve pieces, enough for four as a first course or a warm garnish for roast meat. "Use as required" reflects a professional kitchen that treated these as a component rather than a dish; a spoonful of tomato sauce or pan gravy suits them.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906), and it is a professional chef's shorthand rather than a housewife's recipe: the closing "use as required" assumes a garnish that will be dropped onto a platter of something else. Stuffed cucumber, concombres farcis, was a standard of nineteenth-century French service, where the cucumber was treated as a cooked vegetable, blanched and braised or baked. Filippini was long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and the country sausage in the forcemeat is the American concession.