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Cucumber Soup

A cucumber soup made with butter, white stock, hot milk, mace, pepper, salt, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers, removing the seeds.

  2. Fry the cucumbers in butter until softened.

Make the soup

  1. Add the cucumbers to the white stock along with hot milk, mace, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cook gently for 1.5 hours.

  3. Thicken the soup with a mixture of flour and butter.

  4. Pass the soup through a sieve 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cucumber + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Cucumbers
Form the main body of the soup and give it its fresh, mild flavour.
Butter
Softens the cucumbers by frying and adds richness to the finished soup.
White stock
Provides the liquid base that carries the soup's flavour.
Hot milk
Adds creaminess and a softer, rounder texture to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup together with butter so it becomes smoother and more body.

The step that matters

Cook gently for 1.5 hours. Gentle heat lets the cucumbers break down slowly without boiling, which keeps the soup from scorching on the bottom and helps the flavours blend. Hot milk added to a boiling liquid can also curdle.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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