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Fried Cucumbers (Peel the cucumbers and cut)
Peel the cucumbers and cut them lengthwise in slices half an inch thick, and let them lie in ice water half an hour. Then wipe them with a soft cloth and rub with salt and pepper. Dip each piece in beaten eggs and then in fine crumbs. Fry them in hot fat in a spider, browning one side and turning with a broad-bladed knife and brown on the other side. The slices should never be pierced with a fork.
A straightforward shallow-fry that depends almost entirely on getting the cucumber dry before it meets the egg. Everything else is technique you already have.
- SpiderA spider was originally a long-handled, footed pan meant to stand over coals; by 1900 the word simply meant a heavy cast-iron frying pan. Any heavy skillet works, and cast iron still holds heat best for this.
- Dry them properlyThis is the hinge. Cucumbers are around 95 percent water, and any surface moisture will lift the crumb coating off in the fat. Wipe each slice thoroughly, then salt and pepper it just before breading rather than letting salted slices sit and weep.
- Choose the cucumberCucumbers of the period were generally field-grown and often coarser and seedier than the thin-skinned types now sold. Use a firm cucumber, and if the seed core is soft and watery, scrape it out before slicing.
- Fat and temperatureThe original says only "hot fat" in a spider and gives no depth or temperature. In practice, shallow fat coming partway up the slices at around 350F works: cooler and the coating soaks, hotter and the crumbs brown before the cucumber has softened.
- TimingThe original gives none. Two to three minutes a side is enough to brown the crumbs and leave the cucumber just tender but still holding its shape. Cooked longer it collapses into something closer to a fritter filling.
- Never pierce with a forkNot superstition. Puncturing the slice releases water into the hot fat, which spits and undercuts the crust from beneath. The broad-bladed knife, or a thin fish slice, is the right tool.
- YieldCut lengthwise at half an inch, a medium cucumber gives only three or four slices, so two cucumbers make six to eight pieces -- a side dish for two or three. Serve immediately; they lose their crispness quickly.
Fried cucumbers turn up in American cookbooks from the mid-nineteenth century onward, at a point when the cucumber was still viewed with some suspicion as a raw food. A long-standing belief held that raw cucumbers were indigestible and even dangerous in hot weather, so cooking them was considered the prudent course. Egg-and-crumb frying was a common treatment for vegetables a household wanted to make substantial, and the same books apply it to eggplant, salsify and green tomatoes.