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Onion and Cucumber Soup

A soup made from onions and cucumbers simmered with butter, water, milk, and flour, served hot with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Onion and Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a saucepan, fry the chopped onions and cucumbers in 1 tablespoon of butter for 5 minutes without browning.

  2. Add 1 pint of boiling water and simmer for 45 minutes.

  3. Press the mixture through a sieve to extract as much pulp as possible.

Make the thickened milk

  1. In another saucepan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and mix in 1 tablespoon of flour.

  2. Gradually add 1 pint of hot milk, stirring until thickened.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the thickened mixture with the cucumber puree, season with salt and pepper, and simmer for 5 minutes.

  2. Serve hot with croutons.

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 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

White onions
Softened in butter to build the soup's savoury, sweet base flavour.
Cucumbers
Provide the main vegetable body and fresh, mild flavour of the soup.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness when frying the vegetables and in the roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth roux-based sauce that gives the soup body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a soft, rounded texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Fry without browning. Frying the onions and cucumbers gently keeps their flavour mild and sweet; browning adds bitter, toasted notes that would clash with the delicate soup.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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