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Cream Soup

A creamy soup made with veal or chicken stock, cream, egg yolks, and cucumber or French beans, seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Cream Soup

Why it works: Veal and cucumber work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 439 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the garnish

  1. Prepare the garnish by cutting the cucumber into dice, balls, or fancy shapes. If using French beans, string them and cut into diamonds.

  2. Boil the cucumber or beans in salted water for 7 to 12 minutes until tender.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the stock in a pot.

  2. Add the cooked cucumber or beans to the stock.

  3. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks and cream.

  4. Strain this mixture into the pot.

  5. Cook gently for 2 to 3 minutes without boiling to prevent curdling.

  6. Season to taste 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. Veal + cucumbertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  2. Egg + cucumbertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Veal + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness as they gently set with heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Cook gently for 2 to 3 minutes without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, but high heat makes their proteins tighten and scramble, causing curdling. Keeping the soup below a boil keeps it smooth.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, cream, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cream, egg. 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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