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Another Way to Cook Cucumbers
When the slices of cucumbers are taken from the ice water and dried, rub with salt and pepper and dredge with a little flour and fry them brown in melted butter. When all cooked, pile on a hot shallow dish and serve the following tomato sauce with them: Peel three tomatoes, remove the seeds, chop the pulp fine, and drain. Mix together three-fourths of a teaspoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of sugar, one-fourth of mustard, a dash of pepper, and a little onion juice if desired, and moisten with a little lemon juice and oil. Mix with the drained tomatoes and keep in a cold place until served.
This is the second of a pair of cucumber recipes, and it assumes you have already read the first: the slices are soaked in ice water before frying. A few of the sauce quantities are left open.
- The missing first stepThe recipe assumes slices already soaked in ice water and dried. Absent the earlier recipe's wording, slice the peeled cucumbers fairly thin, soak them in ice water, then drain and press them dry between towels — surface water is what keeps the flour from browning.
- "One-fourth of mustard"The book is carrying the unit forward from the previous items: a quarter teaspoon of dry mustard powder. Prepared mustard would be far too wet for a sauce already being drained.
- Oil and lemon, unmeasuredThe original says only "a little." Start with a tablespoon of oil and a teaspoon of lemon juice for three tomatoes; the sauce should be a moist relish, not a dressing that pools.
- Onion juicePeriod books mean juice pressed from a cut onion, not chopped onion. Grate a small onion on a fine rasp and use the liquid, about half a teaspoon.
- Frying temperatureButter alone browns and burns before the cucumber colors. Use clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, over medium-high heat, and work in batches so the pan does not drop temperature.
- Don't crowd or waitFried cucumber goes limp within minutes as its water comes back out. Cook it last, pile it on a genuinely hot dish, and serve immediately with the cold sauce alongside.
- YieldThe recipe gives no cucumber quantity; this much sauce (three tomatoes) will dress roughly two medium cucumbers, enough for about four as a side dish.
Frying cucumbers, which strikes modern cooks as unusual, was not uncommon in American and English cookery of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the ice-water soak that precedes it may reflect an older belief that cucumbers were cold and indigestible and needed crisping and salting first. The uncooked sauce is essentially a fresh tomato relish: seeded, drained, seasoned, and bound with a little oil and lemon rather than cooked down.