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Cream of Lettuce Soup

A soup made from lettuce, butter, water, rice, parsley, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cream of Lettuce Soup

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream of Lettuce Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Wash and drain the lettuce, then chop it.

  2. In a large pot, melt the butter and cook the chopped lettuce for 4–5 minutes, stirring lightly.

Make the soup

  1. Add the water, season with salt, pepper, and parsley, and stir in the rice.

  2. Cover the pot and cook for 40 minutes, then strain the mixture.

  3. Clean the pot, return the soup to it, and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the sweet cream 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.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lettuce + ricetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

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

  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 body of the soup and gives it its fresh, green flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps soften the lettuce as it cooks gently.
Uncooked rice
Thickens the soup as its starch softens during the long simmer.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stirring in the sweet cream. Cream can curdle or separate if it boils hard, so it is added after the soup has been brought to a boil and then served promptly.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, parsley, rice, cream):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, parsley, rice, 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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