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Summer Soup

A chilled vegetable soup made with cucumber, cabbage, onion, spinach, mint, peas, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Summer Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and chop the lettuces, cucumber, and onion.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the chopped vegetables, 1 cup of shelled peas, mint, and butter.

  3. Cover with 1 quart of cold water, bring to a boil, and simmer gently for 3 hours.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the liquid and pass the vegetables through a sieve.

  2. Return the vegetables to the liquid, heat, and season with salt.

  3. Add ½ cup of previously boiled green peas before serving.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Mint + peastop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Cucumber + spinachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 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

Lettuces
Provide the bulk and soft, leafy body of the soup as they cook down.
Shelled peas
Add natural sweetness and a tender, starchy body to the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering for 3 hours. A long, gentle simmer draws flavour from the vegetables, but a hard boil can cloud the liquid and turn delicate greens dull. Keep it at a gentle simmer.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cabbage, lettuce, onion, spinach, peas, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cabbage, lettuce, onion, spinach, peas, butter. 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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