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Cream of Lettuce Soup

A creamy soup made from shredded lettuce, stock, roux, onion, parsley, milk, egg, and seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Illustration of Cream of Lettuce SoupIllustration

Why it works: Lettuce and milk work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and 410 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Cook the shredded lettuce in the stock for 30 minutes.

  2. Rinse the mixture through a colander and return it to the pot.

  3. Stir in the white roux, minced onion, and parsley.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the milk in a separate vessel and season it with pepper and salt.

  2. Stir in the whipped egg.

  3. Pour this mixture into the tureen.

  4. Add the lettuce soup to the tureen.

  5. Serve with dinner biscuits.

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.

The picture is an illustration, not a photo of this recipe · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lettuce + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together410 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,483 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,562 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the body of the soup and gives it its green, vegetal flavour once cooked down.
White roux
Thickens the stock and gives the soup a smooth, body-rich texture.
Egg
Enriches the soup and thickens it gently when stirred in without boiling.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the flavour of the lettuce and stock.

The step that matters

Stir in the whipped egg. Egg thickens by setting when heated, so it should be added to the warm soup off the boil and stirred steadily. If the soup is too hot, the egg can scramble and leave the texture grainy.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, parsley, milk, pepper, egg, biscuit):

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, parsley, milk, pepper, egg, biscuit. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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