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Stuffed Cucumbers
Cut off the ends and remove the seeds by means of an apple corer. Pare and let them stand in cold water (salted) for fifteen minutes. Heat together one-quarter cup of milk and one-quarter of a cupful of bread crumbs; add one-half cupful of cold cooked chopped veal and the cucumber ends. Season with salt and pepper and a few drops of onion juice; stuff the cucumbers and place in a stewing kettle. Add one pint of veal stock, one-half teaspoonful of salt and a little slice of onion and of carrot. Simmer for thirty minutes. Place the cucumbers on a small platter. Strain the liquor; melt one tablespoonful of butter and add one tablespoonful of flour; pour this into the liquor; let it boil up once, add one teaspoonful of lemon juice. Pour over the cucumbers and serve at once. The cucumbers, when cooked, may be sliced, laid on small rounds of toast, covered with the gravy and served garnished with parsley.
A braised vegetable entrée from the era when cucumbers were as often cooked as eaten raw. The whole thing hinges on cucumbers firm enough to hold their shape through half an hour of simmering.
- Choose the right cucumbersUse short, straight, thick-walled cucumbers — Kirby or pickling types — about 5 to 6 inches long. Long English cucumbers are too watery and thin-walled to survive coring and braising, and will collapse into the sauce.
- Coring without an apple corerAn apple corer of the period was a narrow tube pushed lengthwise through the fruit. A long, thin-bladed paring knife or an iced-tea spoon works, though a corer or a slim melon baller is easier. Keep the trimmed ends; the recipe adds those to the stuffing (the seeds are discarded).
- The salted soakFifteen minutes in cold salted water draws off some moisture and firms the flesh. Pat the cucumbers dry before stuffing or the filling will loosen.
- Cooked veal, and substitutesThe recipe calls for cold cooked veal, so it reads as a way of using up meat already cooked. Cooked chicken, turkey or pork stands in directly; use half a cup, chopped fine, not ground.
- Onion juiceAn old shortcut for onion flavor without texture: grate a peeled onion on a fine rasp and use the liquid, or press a slice in a garlic press. A few drops is genuinely all that is wanted.
- Veal stockA pint of light veal stock is what carries the dish. A mild unsalted chicken stock is the practical substitute; avoid dark beef stock, which overwhelms the cucumber.
- The sauceButter and flour in equal tablespoons, stirred together and then into the strained braising liquid. One boil, as directed, thickens a pint only lightly; simmer a few minutes longer if you want it to coat. The recipe adds the lemon juice after the boil.
- Timing and donenessThirty minutes at a bare simmer, not a boil, and check at twenty. The cucumbers should be translucent and yielding to a skewer but still holding their tubes; past that they slump.
- YieldThe recipe states no yield. The filling comes to roughly a cupful, enough for perhaps three or four small cucumbers; served sliced on toast rounds it will stretch further.
Cooked cucumber was standard in nineteenth-century English and American cookery, stewed, fried or stuffed and served in a pale sauce much like this one; the fashion for eating it raw and cold nearly all the time is more recent. Onion juice and the butter-and-flour liaison poured into strained braising liquor are both consistent with the American domestic-science era, when French sauce technique was being translated into plain household English.