After buying 2 cucumbers in order to make one into a Chinese salad for a party, I decided to make the other into salad as well (as opposed to tzatziki and a tzatziki delivery system). After checking the index of Modern Cookery For Private Families (first published in 1845, reissued in 2011 by Quadrille), I decided to make the cucumber dish with the oddest name.
I canot find out much about the words ‘mandram’ or ‘mandrang’ or who went to to where in the Caribbean to bring the recipe back to Acton. Most descriptions of this ‘salad-like hash’ (William Woys Weaver, Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, edited by Harlan Walker, 1991), lead back to Acton’s recipe, although I enjoyed the idea of it as an ‘unfailing stimulant to the appetite‘. Food in England by Dorothy White (1945) has completely different recipe for ‘cucumber mandram’, so perhaps I’ll have a go at that another time.
Notes
The directions in this recipe were pretty sparse, but I salted the cucumber and onion after slicing it (as I normally would) and left it to drain for an hour, then dressed it.
This is where things get slightly meta. In many vintage recipes, before rice wine was something that could be bought in many supermarkets (or atleast their online stores), sheery was often suggested as a substitute for rice wine and I didn’t have any sherry, so I used rice wine instead. Are you still with me?
Results
This was sweet, fruity, tangy and spicy and to my taste would go well with any kind meat – hot, cold, grilled, roasted, cured, sausage. I ate it with chicken and recommend it to you highly. Not least because it gives you the opportunity to eat something which sounds like the bad guy from a science fiction novel.
Dranged by Elly
The Vintage Cookbook Trials 
It also sounds like a fresher version of bread-and-butter pickle. There seem to be numerous versions on the theme; Madhur Jaffrey has a similar Korean recipe in her vegetarian book.
This sounds like a delicious salad, anything with cucumber and onion has my vote each time as I love the texture and flavours.
@Salada There’s a Japanese recipe that’s similar too with rice vinegar, salt and sometimes wakame seaweed.
A classic combination – cucumber plus sweet’n’sour.
I like cucumbers but feel like there aren’t enough recipes that make good use of them. I’ll have to try this.