Cocktails with Cucumber
Cucumber is the edible fruit of the creeping vine Cucumis sativus, a member of the gourd family, used as a fresh produce ingredient.
Taste profile
A clean green cucumber aroma leads, over a mild, faintly sweet flesh and a watery, cooling finish with little acidity.
How it's used
A few slices muddled, a length dropped in to infuse, or a single ribbon or wheel set as garnish: cucumber lends its fresh green aroma and a light, watery body that lengthens the drink rather than concentrated flavour. Its aroma is strongest immediately after cutting or muddling and fades on standing, so it is prepared to order.
Substitutes for Cucumber
Where cucumber is only a garnish or light watery accent, another high-water produce, water or cold tea can stand in for its length and dilution; but its specific fresh green aroma has no close analogue, so nothing substitutes when the drink is built around that character.
Often confused with
Vegetable (culinary)
Cucumber is botanically a fruit — a pepo, or berry, of Cucumis sativus — but is savoury and used like a salad vegetable, so it is habitually classed as a vegetable by culinary convention rather than by botany.
