Skip to main content
Soup

Cucumber Soup

A chilled or warm soup made from cucumbers, onions, veal stock, and optional cream, eggs, vinegar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare, split, and empty the cucumbers, then sprinkle with salt and let drain for 1 hour.

  2. In a deep saucepan, combine the cucumbers and the white part of the onions, covering with veal stock.

Cook and strain

  1. Stew gently for 45 to 75 minutes until tender.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve and add more stock to reach desired soup quantity.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in arrowroot or rice flour to thicken as needed, then add boiling cream and serve immediately.

  2. For a variation, mix egg yolks with chili vinegar and stir in just before serving, without boiling.

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 + arrowroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Cucumbers
Form the body of the soup and give its fresh, delicate flavour once stewed and strained.
Veal stock
Provides the savoury liquid base that cooks the cucumbers and carries the flavour of the soup.
Arrowroot or rice flour
Thickens the strained liquid so the soup becomes smooth and lightly body-rich.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Egg yolks
Enriches and thickens the soup as a variation when stirred in without boiling.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and curdle or scramble if boiled, leaving the soup grainy. Adding them off the heat, just before serving, keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, veal, pepper, cream, egg, vinegar. 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.

More cucumber soup recipes

Cold 4 See all 50 →

You might also like

Indian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipesCream of Asparagus SoupCream of Asparagus Soup42 recipes