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Cucumber and Tapioca Soup

A chilled cucumber soup thickened with tapioca and finished with beaten egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber and Tapioca Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers crosswise.

  2. Simmer the cucumbers in 1 quart of water for 20 minutes until tender.

  3. Press the cooked cucumbers through a sieve with the cooking water.

Cook the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in 1 pint of cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Place the soaked tapioca in a double boiler and cook until clear.

Finish and thicken the soup

  1. Heat the cucumber mixture and add onion juice and salt.

  2. Stir in the cooked tapioca.

  3. In a tureen, beat the egg yolks.

  4. Gradually pour the hot soup over the egg yolks, stirring briskly.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Onion + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,333 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Onion and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,333 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the body of the soup, providing its main flavor and smooth pureed texture.
Tapioca
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body and a slightly glossy, clear appearance.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and add richness and body when gently tempered into the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Gradually pour the hot soup over the egg yolks, stirring briskly. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot liquid all at once. Adding the soup slowly while stirring warms the yolks gradually, so the soup becomes creamy instead of curdled.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, egg. 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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