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Cucumber Soup

A chilled cucumber soup with butter, herbs, stock, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 247 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumber

  1. Peel the cucumber, quarter it, and remove the seeds.

  2. Slice the cucumber thinly and sprinkle with a little salt to draw out the water.

  3. Drain the cucumber and place it in a saucepan with the butter.

Make the soup

  1. Warm the cucumber through without browning it, then pour in the stock.

  2. Add the sorrel, chervil, and season with salt and pepper; boil for 40 minutes.

  3. Mix the egg yolks with the cream and add just before serving.

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. Chervil + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cucumber + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + cherviltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Chervil + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumber
Forms the main body of the soup and gives it its fresh, mild flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when the cucumber is warmed gently.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and give it a smooth, creamy body when added off the heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth texture that softens the soup's flavour.
Medium stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury depth for the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat. If the soup boils after they are added, the yolks can scramble and curdle, so they should be mixed in just before serving and kept below a simmer.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, chervil, sorrel, pepper, egg, cream):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, chervil, sorrel, pepper, egg, 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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