Cucumbers Compared

What are the differences between English and American cucumbers? And what’s the best way to seed one?

You’ve probably seen them in stores: long, skinny cucumbers wrapped tightly in plastic. They’re sold as seedless cucumbers (they contain small seeds), or sometimes English or European cucumbers. Maybe you noticed the price and walked on by. In fact, after peeling and seeding both English and standard American cucumbers while testing German Potato Salad, a test cook observed that the American kind generated a bigger pile of kitchen scraps. Curious, we held a before and after weighing-in. Seeded, the American cucumbers shed about 45 percent of their weight, the English cucumbers about 30 percent. Taking that into account, the price difference is small. Yeah, but how do they taste? The flesh was about the same, tasters said. But the skin of the American cucumber—coated with food-safe wax to prevent moisture loss—was tough and virtually inedible; the skin of the English variety tasted much better. So we’ll be paying a bit more for the English variety when recipes call for seeding cucumbers. Less waste, plus we won’t have to peel them.