Cucumber
Cucumber contributes a cool, watery freshness and mild vegetal sweetness to a cocktail, usually muddled or thinly sliced for garnish. Its high water content makes it refreshing rather than strongly flavoured. It pairs especially well with gin and citrus.
Common uses
- muddled for a refreshing base note
- used as a garnish slice
Buying & storage
A few days: Once cut it goes soft and watery quickly, and a soft cucumber muddles to nothing.
Buying: Firmer is better — a soft cucumber muddles into water. Unwaxed if you plan to leave the skin on, which you should.
Storage: refrigerate whole and use within a week; slice just before use
In depth
Understanding cucumber
How it is made, where it comes from, what it pairs with, and how it behaves in an alcohol-free drink.
How it's made
No production process worth describing, but a handling one: the flavour and aroma sit close to the skin, so peeling removes most of what you want. Slice thickly for muddling and thinly for ribbons — a thin slice muddled to nothing contributes water and little else.
Origin
A long-standing cooling ingredient in Middle Eastern and South Asian drinks; its bar use is associated with the modern gin and tonic and the twentieth-century Pimm's Cup.
What it pairs with
Gin and botanical spirits, mint, elderflower, lime and tonic. It is delicate, so it is lost under dark fruit or heavy syrups — keep the rest of the drink light.
In alcohol-free drinks
- Reads as fresh and faintly savoury without adding sweetness or acidity, which is unusual and valuable in a category dominated by fruit
- The most reliable way to make an alcohol-free drink taste adult rather than like a soft drink
Before it goes
Use up cucumber
Ranked by how much of it each drink uses and how little else it needs — the ones at the top will not send you back to the shop.
- Pimm's Cup
Uses 30ml. Also needs pimm's no. 1, lemonade, fresh mint.
- Garden Highball
Also needs fresh mint leaves, alcohol-free botanical spirit, tonic water.
- Cucumber Mint Cooler
Also needs fresh mint leaves, fresh lime juice, simple syrup, soda water.
Recipes
Cocktails containing this ingredient
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