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Soup

Hers Soup

A cucumber, spring onion, and lettuce soup thickened with butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hers Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the vegetables

  1. Slice the cucumbers, spring onions, and lettuces.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan and add the vegetables.

  3. Cover and cook over low heat for 1 hour and 20 minutes.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add stock to achieve desired soup quantity, then bring to a boil.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour, then thicken with flour and butter or cream.

  3. If desired, add spinach juice for color.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Cucumber + spinachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body and fresh, mild flavor of the soup.
Lettuces
Add bulk and soften during cooking, contributing body to the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the vegetables' flavor during the initial cooking.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling with heat and giving it a smoother body.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Cover and cook over low heat. Low, covered cooking softens the vegetables gently and keeps moisture in the pot. High heat could scorch the butter and vegetables on the bottom before they soften.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, lettuce, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, lettuce, butter, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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