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Soup

Cream of Cucumbers

A creamy soup made from mutton stock, celery, onions, cucumbers, butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream of Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a pot, combine mutton stock, celery, onions, and cucumbers.

  2. Boil until tender.

  3. Mash the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make the cream

  1. In a separate pan, melt butter and stir in flour to create a roux.

  2. Gradually add 1 quart of milk to the roux, stirring until thickened.

  3. Combine the thickened milk with the mashed cucumber mixture and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Celery + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,745 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Melts with flour to form a roux, giving the cream a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Thickens the milk when cooked with butter, giving the soup a creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that thickens with the roux and mellows the soup.
Cucumbers
Provide the main flavor and, once mashed, the body of the soup.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk to the roux. Adding cold milk all at once can leave lumps of flour. Adding it slowly while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly and thicken into a smooth sauce.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, celery, onion, butter, flour, milk):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, celery, onion, butter, flour, milk. 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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