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Cucumber Soup, White

A chilled cucumber soup made with cucumber puree, broth, milk, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and sugar, served over bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Cucumber Soup, White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumber

  1. Peel and cut the cucumbers into pieces.

  2. Boil the cucumbers in just enough water to cover them until they are reduced to a paste.

  3. Press the mixture through a colander, adding the remaining water from the cucumbers.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the broth and milk, then stir in the cucumber puree.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and a dusting of sugar.

Serve

  1. Place thin slices of bread at the bottom of a soup tureen.

  2. When the soup is about to boil, pour it over the bread in the tureen.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Cucumber + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Break down into a smooth puree that gives the soup its body and fresh flavor.
Veal or chicken broth or consommé
Provides savory depth and liquid that carries the other ingredients.
Fresh milk
Adds richness and creaminess, softening the soup's flavor and texture.
Bread
Soaks up the hot soup in the tureen, adding body and a soft texture.

The step that matters

Pressing the cucumber puree. Cucumber pulp that is not pressed through fully leaves the soup grainy. Pressing it smooth and adding the cooking water keeps the texture silky and the soup thin enough to pour.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, milk, pepper, sugar, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, milk, pepper, sugar, bread. 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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