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Cream of Lettuce Soup

A creamy soup made from sautéed lettuce, butter, sugar, vinegar, flour, stock, and egg yolks.

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

Why it works: Lettuce and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cream of Lettuce Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the lettuce and sauté it in the butter with the sugar and vinegar.

  2. Add the flour and blend well, then gradually add the stock.

  3. When the lettuce is tender, add the egg yolks diluted with cream.

  4. Let the soup thicken while boiling.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 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 main body and flavour of the soup as it softens in butter.
Butter
Carries the lettuce flavour and adds richness during the initial sauté.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth base as it is blended and heated.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup, adding body and a creamy texture when diluted with cream.
Cream
Dilutes the egg yolks and adds richness and smoothness to the finished soup.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that the flour thickens and the lettuce simmers in.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they meet boiling liquid directly. Diluting them with cream first and adding them when the soup is hot but not boiling helps them thicken smoothly.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, egg, tarragon, vinegar, cream, sugar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, egg, tarragon, vinegar, cream, sugar. 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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