On a good day, a cucumber is 96 percent water. That hydrocentic (a word I just made up and am very pleased with) nature of a cucumber lends itself really well to cocktails. If you can extract the water? It’s bonded with cucumber flavor. That makes for a very good syrup. If you chop a cucumber up and soak it in alcohol, the volatile enzymes that give the cucumber its flavor are happy to jump ship and bond with the alcohol instead of the water. The more finely you chop it, the more surface area you provide for this reaction to play out. Let’s do this.
Cucumber syrup
(Trust me; it’s delicious.) Wash an English cucumber — one of the long, plastic-wrapped, ridgey ones — and chop it into medium (1/2-inch) dice. You don’t have to peel it or even remove the stem.
Put the cucumber pieces into a bowl, and put the bowl in your freezer. You can use any kind of container you like, but an open-top bowl will make your freezer smell like cucumbers. Which is nice.
Inside the cells of the cucumber, ice crystals will start to form. It will probably take an hour or two for the cucumber chunks to freeze up completely.
Using a kitchen scale, weigh the cucumber pieces in a small saucepan, and add an equal amount of sugar by weight. If you don’t have a kitchen scale, a typical English cucumber will probably give you around three cups of diced up chunks. This will probably weigh around the same as 1¾ cups of white sugar.
Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally. The first time you do this, you will be shocked at how much liquid comes out of the cucumbers. (It’s around 96 percent water, remember?)
At some point, crush the soggy cucumber pieces with a potato masher to coax even more liquid out.
Bring the mixture to a boil. Stir it for a few seconds, to make sure that all the sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat and let it sit for half an hour or so, then, using a fine-meshed strainer and a funnel, pour it into an empty bottle. In my experience, it will last about a month in your refrigerator. You will probably end up with about two cups of syrup.
Cucumber gin
(This is even more straightforward.) Wash, but don’t peel, some cucumbers.
Put the cucumbers and an equal amount of gin, by weight (see above) in your blender. Because your goal is to overwhelm the gin with cucumber flavor, you can get away with using a fairly non-fancy gin (I like Gordon’s). Blend at the lowest speed for about a minute. The goal here is to chop the cucumbers up pretty finely, to give them more surface area exposed to the alcohol. You’re not actually trying to puree it or anything.
At this point, you will have a bright green mixture that looks like hot dog relish. Pour it into a wide-mouthed jar, label it, and store it somewhere cool and dark for seven days, shaking it two or three times per day.
Strain and bottle it. If you let it set for another day or so, some of the tiny cucumber particles will sink to the bottom of the bottle, and you can strain it again with a coffee filter to make it prettier. Either way, it will be delicious.
Cucumber fizz
(Finally!)
- 2 ounces cucumber gin (see above)
- ½ ounces cucumber syrup (see above)
- 3 to 5 mint leaves
- 5 ounces plain seltzer
- lemon wedge for garnish
Muddle the mint at the bottom of a tall glass. Add ice.
Add the syrup, the gin, and then the seltzer. Squeeze the lemon wedge, then drop it into the pool. Stir.
Cucumber and mint are a classic combination. Gin loves being carbonated. The lemon gives a hint of acid that keeps the cucumber from tasting flat. This is light and fizzy and reminds you that, against all expectations, a cucumber is a fruit. It is the cocktail friend you never knew you wanted to be friends with.
I like to think that it is happy to make the sacrifice for you.
Featured photo: Cucumber Fizz. Photo by John Fladd.